A first look at Branson's rebuilt Necker Island
Hannah Betts was one of the first visitors to return to Necker since Hurricane Irma and the pandemic struck
What goes on Necker stays on Necker and that’s just how the ultra-rich like it.
Humankind has always been obsessed by islands, from Odysseus’s Ithaca to Atlantis and Avalon, Prospero’s isle to Robinson Crusoe’s, Huxley’s Pala to Alex Garland’s fallen Eden. Islands are paradises, utopias, microcosms offering liminal states of being, pending sea change. They also imply a ruler, a king of the castle, monarch of all he surveys. And so it is with Necker Island, the Caribbean haven of billionaire Sir Richard Branson, a man for whom the very earth is insufficient to contain his energies.