In 1963 I applied for a lectureship at the University of the West Indies. When I got to Jamaica, I found the process of decolonisation was under way. Departments had tipped out non-Jamaicans and even excessively pale Jamaicans – all except Medicine and English.

The University

The problem: being colonised. I read two days ago in The Age that in ever-modernising Singapore, where the atmosphere is not that of a swamp, the mosquito Aedes Aegyptii has found itself new places to breed dengue fever beyond the fine tarmac and the regularly-painted walls of the