In the end, the couple discover the garden accessory that destroys the gnomes for good. For all your gnome-fighting needs, I'm sure you can find it at Ikea. The agency is Mother, London.

It’s a big dangerous world out there, but it does look a little bit bigger when you’re encountering it from gnome height. But ...

Pince-nez aquiver on his nose, the elegant banker leaned across the wood-inlaid desk in his Zurich office last week and complained: “We have been called Shylocks, gnomes, sinister manipulators ...