Vera Wülfing-Leckie, my former wife, who has died aged 66, was a lover of Africa, a homeopath and a translator.

Vera’s father had been a Russian prisoner-of-war. Her mother had fled before the advancing Russians from what became East Germany. The cold war seems distant now, but to Vera’s parents the threat was very real. It explained their settling in Lörrach, Germany, close to the border, from where they could get quickly into Switzerland. Despite her many accomplishments, that same sense of apprehension informed Vera’s childhood, her life and her death.