The long MRT trip to Kranji affords plenty of time to contemplate the serried rows of public housing that represent one of the Singapore government’s greatest yet most perplexingly drab achievements. By contrast, the serried rows of 4,000 white gravestones at this peaceful hillside cemetery have a serene, if solemn beauty. Dominated by the huge, wing-like Singapore Memorial, and fronted by a Sir Edwin Lutyens-designed memorial stone, the site includes several monuments for servicemen massacred in the early days of the Japanese Occupation, and one for those lying in ‘unmaintainable graves’ elsewhere in South-east Asia. The inscriptions tell countless tales of death and sacrifice, and you can easily spend an hour piecing together a picture of the British Empire in all its diversity. Also here are the tombs of the first two presidents of Singapore.