If what you want is utter seclusion and perfect peace, in a location off-limits to everyone but the resort staff and a few other guests, then a private island is the only place to go. Here, Diana Westray chooses 20 of the most alluring such properties in the whole world, all accessible only by sea or air, starting with the most exclusive of the Seychelles - the honeymoon destination of choice, it's believed, of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
North Island, Frégate Island Private
and Denis Island 
The northernmost of the 115 islands that make up the Seychelles, North Island is both a nature conservancy and a very private resort of 11 spacious, luxurious thatched villas. Attracted to the island by its potential as a 'sanctuary where natural habitats could be rehabilitated', the management company Wilderness Safaris cleared it of cats, rats, pigs and half its vegetation, and restocked it with endangered Seychellois plants and wildlife - giant tortoises, fruit bats, numerous birds - which now number 200,000 species.
The 11 villas on the three-kilometre-long island have been constructed, as far as possible, from reclaimed and local woods, such as ancient takamaka trees felled by disease rather than chainsaws. Co-architect Silvio Rech describes the style as 'haute couture Robinson Crusoe' (even the immaculately casual staff go barefoot); it fuses polished and pitted teak, pine, rosewood and ylang ylang, thatched roofs, rough-hewn granite and a lot of large pebbles - though the villas are not so eco as to eschew air-conditioning.
The 17 palatial teak villas on neighbouring Frégate Island Private (pictured) - each with a private pool, dining pavilion and butler - offer more conventional, less-laidback luxury, as well as a yacht club, PADI centre and kids club. More affordable, if not exactly inexpensive, are the three villas and 22 cottages on Denis Island, a crescent of palm-fringed beaches, half an hour by plane from Mahé. The wildlife is a major draw: there are superb birdwatching opportunities, and you can snorkel or swim in the lagoon among turtles, clownfish, parrot-fish, triggerfish and rays.
North Island (www.north-island.com), from €2,115 per person per night, all inclusive
Frégate Island Private (
www.fregate.com), doubles from €3,300, minimum stay three nights
Denis Island (
www.denisisland.com), doubles from €970, full board
When to go: All year round, although June-September are drier and less humid, with temperatures from 24
°C to 28
°C
Nikoi Island 
Back in 2003, six ex-pats working in Singapore heard of an island, just off nearby tourist-destination Bintan Island, in the South China Sea, that was for sale. So they rented a boat and set out to explore, finding 15 hectares of shell-strewn beaches, extraordinary rock formations, virgin rainforest and colossal banyan trees, pristine reefs and mangroves.
They bought it, intending to use it as a private retreat for their families. When the pleasures of camping began to
pall, they built a
kampong, or village, and half a dozen beach houses, then hired staff. By 2007 it made sense to open it as a hotel, to which end they added a sand-floored clubhouse with a restaurant and bar, a pool and nine further simple but comfortable beach houses, made from driftwood, local timber and alang-alang grass, each with direct access to the beach. The environmentally sensitive, boho, family-friendly vibe remains very much intact.
Nikoi Island isn't a place for those in search of sycophantic service and high-end luxe (though with rates from £170, you'd hardly expect it to be). Breezes and fans rather than air-con cool its two-storey houses, the bedrooms linked
by elevated walkways in place of closed corridors. Rather,
it has been conceived by its owners as their ideal holiday retreat, a place of natural beauty for people who like the idea of going back to nature and spending all day barefoot on the beach, but who appreciate good food and fine wine, who care about details such as the threadcount of the bedlinen and may even travel with staff (the three-bedroom houses, says the website, have 'an additional small bedroom suitable for a maid or extra child').
Nikoi (00 65 96 351950;
www.nikoi.com), doubles from SG$330 (about £170)
When to go: Just off the coast of Singapore, Nikoi Island has an equatorial climate - hot, humid and fairly wet all year - though it benefits from sea breezes.
The Wakaya Club & Spa, Laucala Island
and Dolphin Island 
Until last year, Fiji's pre-eminent private-island resort was The Wakaya Club & Spa (pictured), David and Jill Gilmour's self-proclaimed 'bastion of ecological sanctity where sound environmental practices and the preservation of Fijian culture are highly valued as well as implemented'. It's an exceptionally lovely development of 10 handsome vernacular cottages, or
bures (rhymes with hooray), made from woven bamboo and indigenous yakawood. Bill and Melinda Gates chose to spend their honeymoon here, perhaps because few resorts prize privacy so highly. Indeed, the grandest bure of all, Vale O, is set amid 16 acres of private land,
and Wakaya Island is inaccessible even to passing yachts; the only way to get there is by private plane, to which
end the resort has its own 2005 Cessna Grand Caravan.
However since December 2008 the Wakaya Club has had
a rival in Laucala Island, a 3,000-acre island that was once the property of Malcolm Forbes but now belongs
to Dietrich Mateschitz, the creator of Red Bull. Perhaps
not surprisingly for the owner of two Formula 1 teams,
his priorities have more to do with sport than with environmental concerns, to which end there's a championship-level golf course, designed by David McLay Kidd (who designed the Castle course at St Andrews) and maintained by 10 greenkeepers, a 5,000 square-metre swimming pool (the largest in the South Pacific), and
a flotilla of nine craft ranging from three jet-skis to a game-fishing pleasure cruiser. All this shared by the residents of just 25 villas, each with its own pool, dotted around its two and half miles of coast; yet the staff of
the resort runs to 329.
Dutch diplomat Alex van Heeren, founder of the perennially popular Huka Lodge in New Zealand, acquired Dolphin Island - a luxuriantly verdant 13-acre speck that's a 10-minute boat ride from Rakiraki on the main Fijian
island of Viti Levu - as a place for private family holidays. Now, however, having substantially renovated its four-bedroom accommodation, van Heeren has made it available to paying guests on an exclusive-use basis.
It's an idyllic place, with a fine sandy beach, stretches of mangrove (waiting to be explored by kayak), a swimming pool and walking trails. Close to the island's main jetty stand three large weathered-timber, palm-thatched, veranda-wrapped bures, built using local techniques.
The central building is essentially living space, and it is flanked by two more buildings containing two double bedrooms apiece. There's also a 'sleep-out
bure' on a hilltop near the eastern end of the island - an utterly romantic, if rustic, open-walled structure for those unfazed by nature (though the bed is, at least, swathed in mosquito netting), where you're woken by an unforgettable sunrise.
The Wakaya Club & Spa (00 679 3448 128;
www.wakaya.com), doubles from US$2,185
Laucala Island (00 679 888 0077;
www.laucala.com), doubles from US$4,560
Dolphin Island (
www.dolphinislandfiji.com), exclusive use from A$9,000 (about £6,000) per night, including all food, drinks, transfers and non-motorised water sports
When to go: Fiji is warm and wet all year, though from May until November temperatures drop and it rains less.
Amanpulo 
One of the smaller of the Cuyo islands in the Sulu Sea,
just 500 metres across at its widest point, Pamalican is
the tropical island of cliché, so white are its palm-fringed beaches, so many shades of blue and emerald the sea
that laps them. It practically goes without saying that it's surrounded by a vast coral reef where the diving is sensational. The only hotel on the island is Aman resorts' superb
Amanpulo, which is made up of 40 standalone casitas based on traditional Filipino rural houses, some on the beach, some in the treetops and each with its own buggy. And the only way to get here is by private plane; a Dornier 228-202K meets guests at Manila and flies them 288km south to the island's private airstrip. If one is going to pick nits, it's possibly worth pointing out that the hotel opened in 1993, and although a new spa opened last year, the casitas (and the bathrooms especially) are beginning to show their age, in design terms. But it's heaven all the same.
Amanpulo (00 63 2 976 5200;
www.amanresorts.com), doubles from US$880
When to go: December to March. Avoid monsoon season from May to November.
Lizard Island, Bedarra and Hayman Island 
Australia's coast is rich in private-island hotels, notably Lizard Island (pictured). The northernmost and most isolated of Queensland's island resorts, 17 miles offshore, this is the only one with direct access to the Great Barrier Reef and from which you can snorkel right off its 24 beaches. There are all sorts of boat excursions on offer: diving (not least
to the fabled Cod Hole), snorkelling, and big-game fishing.
At first glance the hotel is slightly unprepossessing, with accommodation for 80 in white-painted wooden hut-like structures with white corrugated-iron pitched roofs (opt
for a villa if you crave seclusion), and not-very-private verandahs, which you may find yourself sharing with one
of the prehistoric monitor lizards after which the island is named. But the interiors are stylish and comfortable in a contemporary, understated way, the desert-island setting
is sensational and the sunsets are spectacular, especially if you're allocated one of the rooms on Sunset Ridge. Be sure to do the four-hour return hike to the island's high point, Cook's Look, named after Captain Cook who discovered it.
Lizard Island has an area of almost 10 sq km, compared with which Bedarra is a mere speck of a place. Four kilometres off the coast of Queensland, it is cloaked in a luxuriant jungle of banyans, tree ferns, lianas and vines, and girded with white-sand beaches. With just 16 villas (the treetop pavilions, where the private plunge pools appear to be suspended from the decks, are the most alluring), there are never more than 32 guests here at once, so you have
a pretty good chance of finding one to yourself. The ethos
is more about luxury and indulgence than getting close
to nature - perhaps because there's no neighbouring reef, and you're a 90-minute boat ride from a dive site.
The most northerly of the Whitsundays, the newly renovated Hayman Island is an altogether bigger and glitzier proposition, with acres of marble, and 244 rooms, suites and penthouses where the decor is influenced by Louis XVI, Venetian, Moroccan and Mediterranean styles. The French Penthouse, for example, incorporates not just a grand piano but a fireplace, lest it suddenly turn chilly in the tropics. So, while it may be a private island (it used to belong to the aviation entrepreneur Reg Ansett) it feels like quite
a populated one, inhabited as it is by a staff of 500, for whose children there is even an island school.
Lizard Island (00 61 3 9413 6284;
www.lizardisland.com.au), doubles from A$1,160 (about £780), all-inclusive
Bedarra Island (00 61 2 8296 8010;
www.bedarraisland.com), from about £1,145 per person per night, all-inclusive
Hayman Island (00 61 7 494 0183;
www.hayman.com.au), doubles from about £315
When to go: The north-east of Australia is sunny and warm all year, though summer (December-March) can be very hot.
Lake Mälaren 
Spend the summer like the Swedes and escape to a lake. Fifty miles from Stockholm, the tiny private islet on Lake Mälaren is available for exclusive hire. There are just four buildings on it: a house containing three bedrooms, a dwelling consisting of a single room, a state-of-the-art sauna and a one-bedroom 'round' house (currently being renovated). The main house is light, airy and beautifully furnished in a style that fuses Gustavian tradition with contemporary Scandinavian design. And the rent includes the use of a small boat with an outboard motor (rental of a bigger 225hp Anytec 750SPD is available to those licensed to drive one), in which guests can motor across to the attractive little town of Mariefred and Gripsholm Castle.
Book with Grand Trips Sweden (
www.grandtripsweden.com), from SEK16,000 (about £1,560) for a weekend; sleeps eight
When to go: Midsummer, when there's light in the sky all night, is a magical time to visit.
Lighthouse Grebeni 
Built in 1872, Lighthouse Grebeni stands on a rugged rock populated only by yellow-legged gulls about a kilometre
off the coast of southern Croatia, a four-kilometre boat ride from Dubrovnik's Old Harbour. It's not a place for the fainthearted, because beyond the (functioning) lighthouse itself - which has three simply-furnished double bedrooms, one single and two bathrooms, plus a kitchen and large living area - there is nothing at all here bar a couple of sun-trap terraces. Not even a beach, though one can swim from the quay, and intrepid divers can explore the wreck
of an Italian ship,
Taranto, which hit a mine in 1943 and sank about 20 metres from the lighthouse. Entertainment apart, guests should want for nothing, for the lighthouse
is serviced daily by staff from the Hotel Dubrovnik Palace, whose facilities guests can use. One can also hire a chef and a butler for an additional €100 a day. A dedicated speedboat ferries guests between the lighthouse, hotel and city. For a real sense of isolation, there's little to touch it.
Lighthouse Grebeni (00 385 20 430 830;
www.alh.hr), from €400 a night; sleeps seven
When to go: July and August are reliably sunny but busy; go in May-June or Sept-Oct, when the sea is warm enough to swim in.
Cayo Espanto 
Five kilometres off Ambergris Caye, the largest island of
the Belizean archipelago, Cayo Espanto, is a low-lying sandy island, its interior dense with coconut palms.
There are eight standalone villas, seven of them arranged
on its north and south coasts, and one, Ventanas, built
out over the water at the end of a 45-metre wooden walkway on the east of the island. The villas vary in size
and spec, but are all simple wooden structures, lined in local hardwoods of cericote and jobillo, and plainly but comfortably furnished with giant beds and rattan chairs.
In the main building of the hotel there's a restaurant
where three meals a day are served, and the cooking is
held to be the best in Belize, making the most of local ingredients such as parrot-fish, mahi-mahi, black corn
and Belizean staples such as plantain, black beans and mole sauces made from chilli and chocolate. There's
no choice, though you'll be asked to complete a survey indicating your likes and dislikes in advance, and nothing
is prepared without your prior approval. There is very
little to do beyond the diving, snorkelling and fishing excursions the hotel offers, and exploring neighbouring atolls in a simple wooden skiff.
Cayo Espanto (00 910 323 8355;
www.aprivateisland.com), villas from US$1,600, full board; minimum stay four nights
When to go: Belize is hot all year round; the driest and most pleasant time to go is from December until April.
British Virgin Islands: Necker Island, Guana Island and Peter Island Resort & Spa
The most northerly of the Leeward Islands, this archipelago is home to several private islands, none lovelier than Sir Richard Branson's Necker Island, which lies 30 minutes by boat north-east of Tortola, itself a 35-minute flight from San Juan (which is, ironically, best reached on British Airways, which flies direct from Gatwick). Its 74 acres are home to 200 flamingos, 60 resident staff and a maximum of 28 guests.
It's an idyllic place. Indeed it's hard to believe that a more beautiful stretch of sand exists than Turtle Beach, off
which an aqua trampoline is anchored to the seabed.
For something more laid back there's Guana Island, the self-styled 'Virgin Island that still is'. Also north of Tortola, this private island has 850 acres of undulating tropical rainforest with all-inclusive accommodation in 15 simple beach cottages, furnished in an unfussy style inspired by the Quakers who first populated the island and ran the sugarcane plantation here. The cottage on North Beach, with its own saltwater pool, is the loveliest and most remote. There are no phones or TVs, but there is Wi-Fi.
Directly south of Tortola is the largest private island in
the British Virgin Islands. Owned by the Van Andel family (owners of the Amway Corporation), the 1,800-acre Peter Island is in many ways the tropical island of legend: a long, thin, jungle-cloaked mountainous landmass, lined with five beaches and 20 coves, some of which can be booked so that you have the place to yourself. No wonder this part of the archipelago is thought to be where Robert Louis Stevenson set
Treasure Island. Its palm-fringed, crescent-shaped, hammock-strung main beach is even called Deadman's Bay.
For the moment the most desirable accommodation is
the villas - Falcon's Nest, Hawk's Nest and Crow's Nest -
on which US$1.2 million has recently been lavished, and which are popular with those in search of absolute privacy and seclusion. Actor-turned-hotelier Robert De Niro has rented the best of them, the six-suite Falcon's Nest, from US$8,000 (sleeps 12). Or for upwards of $300,000 a
night you can hire out the whole island: 32 quite modest rooms, 20 junior suites and three villas - as footballer
Rio Ferdinand did for his wedding in 2009.
Necker Island (020 8600 0430;
www.neckerisland.virgin.com), exclusive use from about US$58,300, minimum
stay five nights, sleeps 28
Guana Island (00 1 212 482 6247;
www.guana.com), doubles from about US$815
Peter Island Resort & Spa (020 7339 6888;
www.peterisland.com), doubles from about US$440
When to go: From Easter to June, when the foliage is in bloom (and hotel rates tend to be less expensive than the popular winter season).
Turks and Caicos Islands: Parrot Cay
This 1,000-acre private-island hotel is by far the most alluring of the 49 cays that make up Turks & Caicos,
a 75-minute flight from both Miami and Nassau followed
by a half-hour boat transfer. Hence its reputation as a
celebrity magnet - not that it's off-limits to lesser mortals.
Owned by Christina Ong's COMO Hotels & Resorts,
Parrot Cay has the look of a New England beach house: lots of white tongue-and-groove panelling and pale upholstery, with tropical accents in the Balinese teak,
cane and rattan furniture and wafting mosquito nets.
But its real glories are its mostly empty mile-long beach
of the palest, softest sand and intensely turquoise water, which deepens, past a line of white breakers, to an inky indigo at the reef. The atmosphere is chilled and understatedly glamorous (though not intimidatingly so), and the predominantly Asian staff have that extraordinary knack of figuring out what you want before you've thought of it. And its lagoon-facing spa, the COMO Shambhala Retreat - the brand that sets the standard to which all spas should aspire - is outstanding.
When to go: From Easter to June, when the foliage is in bloom (and hotel rates tend to be less expensive than the popular winter season).
Antigua and Barbuda: Jumby Bay
Two miles off the north-east coast of Antigua lies Long Island, something of a misnomer given that it's neither elongated, nor long - not much more than a mile end to end, with a circumference of less than four. All of which may explain why the island, which is part of the Texas-based Rosewood Resorts group and reopened last year after a US$28 million renovation, is more usually referred to as Jumby Bay. Seven minutes by speedboat from Antigua, it's an island that's unusually easy to reach. This everything-
taken-care-of attitude pervades all aspects of the resort,
an all-inclusive of the classiest kind (even Champagne is complimentary as long as you order it by the glass), staffed by a team who could not be more helpful or caring.
For somewhere so new, the look is resolutely old-school, ostensibly 'British colonial' with terracotta (or roseate stone) floors, loud colours and prints. But every room is impressively kitted out, right down to the provision of Nespresso machines, Bose sound systems and bicycles (each villa has its own golf cart). There's a substantial
spa and an excellent kids' club (the whole place is supremely child-friendly), and as a big, slick, luxurious, happy holiday resort, it's hard to fault. Only its proximity
to the main flight path is a disincentive.
Jumby Bay (00 1 268 462 6000;
www.jumbybayresort.com), doubles from about US$1,540
When to go: From Easter to June, when the foliage is in bloom (and hotel rates tend to be less expensive than the popular winter season).
Petit St Vincent 
Petit St Vincent is a private islet of just 135 acres in the Grenadines, the southernmost of the Lesser Antilles, an idyllic place of densely forested hills and coral-sand beaches, where the emptiness makes it feel like unclaimed wilderness. From its highest point, Marni Hill, you can see almost the entire Grenadines archipelago: the purple hills of St Vincent in the north; Grenada just about visible to
the south. And in between: Mustique, Canouan and the sublimely beautiful Tobago Cays. Yet on the island itself, scarcely a sign of habitation is visible: no vehicles, no
other people, barely a building; just jungle giving way to beaches (Caribbean and Atlantic) and the horizon beyond. And no sound but birdsong and the wind in the trees.
For the moment there are just 22 two-person cottages, so one can be virtually assured of a stretch of beach to oneself. Indeed, if you choose to dine on your veranda, you could spend a week here interacting with no one but the staff.
Former US airman Haze Richardson happened on the islet while sailing in the Grenadines in 1963, bought it, and by the end of that decade was beginning to establish the small hotel. Designed in collaboration with Arne Hasselqvist, the architect responsible for the first villas on Mustique, the cottages owe something to the era in which they were built: simple structures of blue bitch stone found on the island and purpleheart wood, with cane furniture, rush mats and practically no mod cons: no keys, no TVs, no phones, no air-con, no pool, no Wi-Fi, not even mosquito nets (and the insects can be vicious). In many ways, it's like travelling back in time. Not least because this is surely the only hotel in the world that provides a can of spray starch along with an iron, and where the soap is old-fashioned Palmolive.
Last year, however, the island was sold to Phil Stephenson, a Washington lawyer turned oil magnate, and Robin Paterson, a British-born, Barbados-based property developer, who have been upgrading the accommodation: lightening the oppressive, brown decor with something paler and more Caribbean, replacing the twin double beds with a single kingsize, adding a new beachside restaurant and a spa - targeted as much at passing yachts as resident guests - and engaging a new general manager with an Aman resorts background. Petit St Vincent in its new incarnation stands to be unveiled next month.
A number of new villas are also on the drawing board, though the hilly, beach-encircled island is easily large enough to accommodate more without compromising the sense of the privacy that is PSV's compelling selling point.
But even while it's a work in progress, the island exudes a powerful allure, a place where time really does seems to slow, you live by the sun and your cares melt away.
Petit St Vincent (00 1 800 654 9326;
www.psvresort.com), doubles from US$1,260, full board
When to go: From Easter to June, when the foliage is in bloom (and hotel rates tend to be less expensive than the popular winter season).
Tavanipupu Private Island Resort, Solomon Islands 
In the South Pacific Ocean, Tavanipupu is a dot of an island, and one of the 1,000 that make up the Solomon Islands. Formerly a coconut plantation, it was transformed into a dreamy island paradise back in the 1970s by a British interior decorator (who still lives on the island) and his late partner.
Now run by new owners, Tavanipupu is a five-star resort that retains its natural charm, and ticks all the boxes: pristine white beaches running into limpid turquoise waters, and backed with palm trees. A handful of simple, beach-rustic thatched bungalows are set in tropical gardens. Inside, bedrooms have wooden furniture and white linen and canopied nets over four-poster beds.
Guests can dine, if they want, at the water's edge. The restaurant gets its produce and ingredients mainly from the local area and the organic garden; the Tavanipupu chickens provide eggs and meat; but the best dishes come, not surprisingly, from the sea.
There's also a spa overlooking the coral sea; and the concierge will arrange fishing trips, cycling tours on the Guadalcanal mainland, expeditions to explore uninhabited islands in the area, and dives in the most wonderfully clear waters, on the reef that shelters the island and forms a natural blue lagoon. There are also paddleboards, kayaks and snorkels that anyone is welcome to use.
Doubles from A$308 (about £200) per night; alternatively, the whole island is available for hire. For more details contact
www.tavanipupu.com
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