Dr. Michael Van der Poorten keeps his garden well stocked with poisonous plants. A few leaves from the patch of Kalanchoe growing in the shade are enough to make up a fatal dose while the slender vine of Tragia spp, a stinging nettle, lies close to the path, ready to inflict intense itching on anyone foolish enough to step on it.

In pursuit of this, Sivasambu reflected on Woolf’s time at Cambridge where, along with literary luminaries like Lytton Strachey and the philosopher G.E. Moore (author of ‘Principia Ethica’), he was part of the self-styled “Apostles”. They prided themselves on their attachment to “values which transcended their age and their country”( in other words beyond imperialism).