The great white palace - Tony Porter

In 1986 Tony Porter and his wife, Beatrice, gave up their successful London careers to buy Burgh Island, off the south Devon coast, with its near-derelict, long-forgotten Art Deco hotel. Up to their necks in debt and with a massive programme of repairs and maintenance ahead of them, they gradually laboured to restore it to its former glory and transform it into the beautiful, luxurious place it is today. Like St Michael's Mount, Burgh Island was originally the site of a medieval monastery. Cut off from the mainland at high tide, it has also been a notorious smugglers' paradise and it is said that the ghost of one Tom Crocker still haunts the island. Since the hotel's inception in 1929, the rich and famous have been holidaying there; not only did Agatha Christie come ("And Then There Were None" and "Evil under the Sun" were both based on the island), but so did Edward, Prince of Wales, with Wallis Simpson, Mountbatten, Noel Coward and many others.