Where do you take one of the world’s leading aesthetes for lunch in Sydney? The Opera House is out, its best restaurant closed between leases. Overblown decor in some modish eatery elsewhere might leave his finely tuned sensibilities too unsettled to be interviewed: a disaster.

I decide I can’t go wrong with the glories of nature. Roger Scruton , an outspoken supporter of the English countryside at home, is clearly taken with the restaurant in the Royal Botanic Gardens, the dining room open to the lily pond, the bird calls and the dappled autumn light.