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largest flower on earth that now bears his name: Rafflesia . But this was not one to collect for a posy to Sophia. This plant blooms only once every ten years or so, with a flower a yard across and a nectary that can hold a gallon and a half. Furthermore, it smells strongly of decomposing carrion to attract pollinating flies. What with the durians and all, the aromatically-challenged Indonesian rainforest must be hell for sniffer dogs.

    I cross Elgin Bridge to the north side of the river, dominated by the Padang, a grassy emptiness of a sports ground for rugby and cricket. This must be the most expensive field in the world, standing as it is on a prime development site. Hey, isn’t this the city where everything has its price? But no, Singapore needs the Padang because the memory of Empire and descent from Raffles is the historical glue that holds its disparate communities together. Sometimes one must be thankful for petty patriotism, manufactured or not; it may be the last refuge of the scoundrel, but it also acts as a scarecrow to the sly land speculator. Maybe the Buddha was mistaken: there are some things that money is not allowed to buy, even in Singapore.
    A small pavilion housing the Singapore Cricket Club is dwarfed by the soaring Raffles City skytowers behind it. The rugby goalposts are zoned in such a way that Jonny Wilkinson could score a conversion across the road straight into the Supreme Court cupola. This was the last of the great neoclassical colonial buildings, completed in 1939, right at the twilight of the Empire. Japanese propagandists criticising British imperialism liked to point out that the Supreme Court and Changi Prison were the finest buildings in all Malaya. They were not far off the mark: the Supreme Court is an elegant, domed building with a beautiful triangular pediment, The Allegory of Justice, standing on six Corinthian columns.
    The Corinthian motif continues next door at City Hall, with its long, colonnaded portico. Its dramatic entrance at the top of a long flight of steps lends itself to occasion and it is no surprise that it is in this building that the biggest events in Singapore’s history have taken place. This is where Lord Mountbatten accepted the Japanese surrender in 1945 and where Singapore was granted self-government in 1959. More poignantly it is here where it finally broke off from Malaysia on 9 August 1965, Singapore’s National Day. At the time, no one thought that a city with no hinterland, not enough water, no agriculture and no factories could be a viable state. In retrospect, this was all bunk from backward-looking analysts who had fetishised manufacturing and heavy industry. Singapore made its income from trade and services and attracted investment by being a model of efficient administration in an area where having both hands on the till is as natural as having noodles with your lunch.
    I take a picture of Raffles’ statue in Singapore that stands tall outside the Victoria Theatre on the other side of the Supreme Court. His arms are folded like a master engineer surveying a greenfield site. He looks much older than his portrait with a thin, resolute face, a receding hairline, and a commanding erect poise. He is dwarfed by the clock tower rising behind him on top of the theatre, over a double series of Italianate windows. No one but me stops by the statue or pauses to admire the building itself.

    If the East India Company directors thought that Raffles’ ardour would suffocate in the fetid backwater of Sumatra they couldn’t have been more wrong. The first thing he did was to emancipate the slaves in Bencoolen against the wishes of the Honourable Company. The board were indignant: why should a commercial enterprise be in the vanguard of this new morality? Would they now have to pay those slaves for working? What a dent in the profits that would make!
    But the real preoccupation of Raffles was with the Dutch who were set on expanding their