On torrid days in Singapore, the mercury can rise to 40°C. This is when interior designer Elizabeth Hay, who relocated to the tropical city-state in 2013, dreams of home. She pictures the whitewashed kitchen of her thatched cottage, tucked into the quiet green fold of an isolated Devon valley. Lawns tumble down to a brook and blossom drifts across the orchard in spring – an idyllic vision of England that might have come from a Thirties guidebook
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