Buying a private island is high on every lottery player’s wish-list, along with going on a world cruise and picking up a mansion plus a sports car or two. With an island of your own, you’re master of all you survey, in splendid isolation. But it’s not just a Desert Island Discs-inspired daydream. In a fast-shrinking world, privacy has become a very valuable commodity, and wealthy companies and individuals will part with millions for the seclusion that an island provides.

When tycoon Rupert Murdoch summoned together the lieutenants of his media empire one summer, they assembled on Hayman Island, a resort off the Great Barrier Reef owned by one of his many companies, Ansett Airlines. On Hayman, News Corporation managers could discuss plans for the future in absolute privacy. Cumberland Island, off the east coast of the US where Florida meets Georgia, has been a haven for the billionaire Carnegie dynasty for more than a century. Thomas Morrison Carnegie, brother of steel magnate Andrew, bought it as a place to live in seclusion - along with a hundred servants - and his fifth generation descendants still visit the forested island for family gatherings.

Old Etonian Andrew Martin has lived alone on his own private island since 1964. He spent £15,000 buying Percy Island, off the Australian coast, intending to sell it on at a profit. Since then he’s received multi-million offers from property developers, but as he told a TV crew - paying him a rare visit as part of the Angus Deayton show In Search of Happiness - that he’d never sell:

“It’s too good to sell to some developer or rich man who’s just going to treat it like a vanity plaything. It’s invaluable, like the most precious jewel in the world. The views, everything running free, knowing that I can walk around, muster the sheep, shoot the goats, it’s what makes my heart beat, what ’sends’ me as they say.”

Closer to home, reclusive twins David and Frederick Barclay, the multimillionaire property barons and owners of The European and The Scotsman newspapers, built a Gothic castle on their own private island in the middle of the English Channel. They bought Brecqhou, a granite island west of Sark, in 1993 for £2.3 million.

The Barclay twins built a huge castle, replete with spires and towers, and called it Fort Brecqhou (pronounced Bre-KOO). They issued their own postage stamps and sewed their family crest on the Sark’s Seigneur’s flag to make it their own. Supplies are ferried to the rocky outcrop by a boat called the Brecqhou Warrior. Construction costs were estimated at around £90 million.

Less lavishly, Cauldy Island - a 20-minute boat ride from Tenby in Wales - is the home of a silent order of Cisterian monks. Their abbey owns the island, whose peace and isolation helps to preserve the monastic way of life in our intrusive modern world.

“As a silent order we communicate when we need to, but there’s no chit-chat,” commented one monk. “The island is a very tranquil place.” The 18 monks earn money making perfume and confectionery, and in summer they welcome visitors. There are also about 40 islanders who work for the abbey and live in a Mediterranean-style village.

Sometimes when you buy an island, you’re buying a whole community with it. The 76 inhabitants of Eigg, 10 miles off the northwest coast of Scotland, are effectively dependent on the owner of the island - the laird.

Eigg’s owner for the past 20 years left recently after a worsening of relationships with his tenants, climaxing in the mysterious torching of his Rolls Royce. Few islanders were sorry to see their laird go, but many have doubts about their new owner - the German artist and self-styled fire-worshipper Professor Marlin Eckhard Maruma.

Eckhard bought the island for £1.5 million - the equivalent price fetched by three of his artworks - and has spoken of wanting to ‘improve’ it, but some islanders fear their home is about to be transformed into some kind of strange New Age colony.

“The landlord’s power here is greater than elsewhere,” comments Simon Halliwell of the resident’s association, tactfully. The islanders simply have to wait and see how their home will change.

Artificial island forts, built on sandbanks in the 1850s to guard against a French invasion, still stand sentinel between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. When the forts were sold off by the MoD in the 1980s, the McGuire family bought Spitbank Fort. Since then they’ve restored it to its original condition, and live on it each tourist season, showing boat-trippers around and hosting private parties. “We’re not far from land really,” says Pauline Guire. “But it’s a nice place to wake up in the summer.”

Their nearest neighbour is No Man’s Land Fort, three times the size of Spitbank. The island is privately owned and used as a retreat.

In contrast to this stone giant, another of Britain’s private islands almost vanishes each high tide. Ynys Gorad Goch, located in the Menai Strait between Anglesey and Wales, is officially three acres in size but shrinks down to one as the tide comes in. The owners modernised the island after centuries of usage as a base for catching fish in traps set along its shore.

So how do you go about buying an island of your own? At the luxury end of the market, specialist websites have emerged online. Interest in buying islands has grown as communications technology has improved, and the catalogue of islands for sale and rent online has grown in recent times.

The Bahamas is particularly attractive as it has no income tax and is a democratic and stable member of the Commonwealth. One way to live the dream without expending excess cash is to visit Richard Branson’s Necker Island, located among the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. It’s a 74-acre private island that the Virgin boss hires out for fortnightly stints. A spokesperson comments business is brisk: “We don’t have to advertise widely - interest spreads by word of mouth.”

For $15,000 a day, 24 guests can occupy the luxurious island, cared and catered for by a 22 person strong staff. With special weeks for couples starting at $8,000 a week, Necker might be the closest most of us could ever get to owning a private island.

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