I keep a wary eye peeled for religious fanatics and rabid atheists as I lead Dr. Richard Dawkins through the Governor’s Mansion in Galle. Both would only try to hijack my subject, (albeit for very different reasons) and I am intent on shepherding my charge through to where a modest verandah abuts a small garden. There two white chairs and a few minutes of quiet are waiting for us. As the 2012 Galle Literary Festival party gets into full swing on the crescent of lawn out front, Dawkins says he’s considering a trip to Matara.

My father was an amazingly unusual man. He was a self-made man, the child of a farmer who died when he was 10. My father recounts walking barefoot eight kilometres to school every day from the village. He had a tough upbringing. The elder brother – much older, 17 years older - went away and made good and then took the younger brothers with him to England and so my dad was able to move suddenly from a village life of poverty to go off and study in England at the end of the second WW.