I used to love a heatwave. I was the sort of British person who acted like I was in the Mediterranean if the sun was slightly visible, coercing friends to take the outside restaurant table and eagerly working in the garden until my MacBook started to overheat rather than my internal organs. That was until I developed post-viral fatigue from the flu nine years ago.

Now, the heat means suffering rather than pleasure: less energy, more pain and worse breathing. This has only increased as heatwaves across Europe have soared. I have spent this week of record-high May temperatures in the UK largely in bed, with the blinds drawn and two 5ft-high fans looming over me like security guards at a club no one wants to get into.

Click on a news site in recent days and you’ll have seen headlines about how air conditioning (AC) is becoming Britain’s go-to tool to beat the heat. Four million households in the UK now have AC of some sort – double the amount there were just three years ago – as more of us work from home and temperatures rise.

And yet there is a fact that many have not yet wrestled with: the millions of homes now enjoying air conditioning don’t house most of the people who really need it.

While the wealthy and healthy can find tens of thousands of pounds to kit out their houses with built-in AC systems,........

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