The Peacock Dome

"We focused on public rooms in the hotel, and we stripped and redecorated them in 1930s style.

"We have spent �30,000 on period furniture and it is splendid and glamorous, with a very pure 1920s and 30s palm court."

The crime novelist Agatha Christie stayed in a writers' shack on the island called the Beach House.

It was here that she penned two novels, And Then There Were None and Evil Under The Sun.

The island has a much longer history than the 1930's... there was a monastery and it was later inhabited by fishermen, smugglers, and then wreckers

Deborah Clark

In the 1930s other guests at the Burgh Island Hotel included Noel Coward.

It retains a stained glass Peacock Dome, a ballroom and staircase flanked by jet glass and pink mirrors.

Mrs Clarke, 39, added: "Now we will focus on the island as a whole experience.

"We have renovated a smugglers' inn called the Pilchard, and there is also a quaint cafe which will serve traditional cream teas."

Burgh Island is totally cut off by the sea at high tide, but can be reached twice a day across a causeway which connects it to the mainland.