Complete Audio Books About Sri Lanka

About Complete Audio Books About Sri Lanka

The Ceylon Press' Complete Audio Books tell the stories of some of Sri Lanka's most remarkable people, places, and events.

Publisher

The Ceylon Press

Category

history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

28 Jun 2025

Latest episode

7 May 2026

Latest episodes

11 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 May 2026

   Regicide: Sri Lanka’s Moriyan Kings

   Tanzania has more lions than any other country - Sri Lanka excepted. Admittedly, Sri Lanka’s capacious pride of lions is a depiction rather than a collection of living, breathing, roaring specimens – but right across the island, lions dominate the scene with a flamboyance that had much to teach the muted heraldic beasts on such other national flags as Spain or Paraguay. Fluttering with pride across a million or more flagpoles from banks to private houses, government buildings to temples, lions have also given their name to any number of other things - from Lion tea to Lion larger, from Mount Lavinia’s Lion Pub to Galagedera Royal Lion Hotel, from soaps, cars, jewellers, insurance sales forces and even pop groups down south in Henakaduwa. Statues of the beast also found their way into early temples, palaces, and monasteries -  unfloutable sentinels of the great buildings of the state. But quite how lions got here is a matter of simmering altercation amongst vexillologists. Some point the finger at Prince Vijaya, others at King Dutugemunu, and still others at King Nissan Kamalla. But whatever the truth of the matter, there is more to the lion than just flags or brand names. That lions should assume so central a role is a victory of sorts for Panthera Leo Sinhaleyus, a subspecies of the lion unique to Sri Lanka, which became extinct in 37,000 BCE – about the same time as the island’s famous Stone Age Balangoda Man walked his own last steps. Its discovery only came to light in 1936, when the archaeologist P.E.P. Deraniyagala uncovered two fossilised teeth in Kuruwita, near Ratnapura. With the passion of a forensic detective, the archaeologist studied his modest clutch of exhumed teeth. One was so damaged as to be of little use in identifying anything, but the other, a left molar, presented such a distinctive structure as to not just twin it with lions but also set it apart from all known lion species. The discovery was later validated by a further breakthrough in 1962, when a complete right-limb middle phalanx of the same species was found. From these fragile artefacts, a lost subspecies was uncovered, its size indicating that the beast was a lion much larger than the present Indian lion. Back in 37,000 BCE, Sri Lanka was a very different place from what it would become, an island of open grasslands – a habitat perfect for lions, and big ones at that. But over time, as the monsoon rain fuelled the proliferation of trees, its habitat became ever more restricted and at some point, the creature just died out. Today, the Sri Lankan lion’s paramount historical descendant sits at the feet of what islanders call the eighth wonder of the ancient world - Sigiriya Rock. This massive lump of granite - a hardened, much-reduced magma plug – is all that is left of an extinct volcano. Lost in forests, inhabited by hermit monks between the third century BCE and the first century CE, it was exposed by colossal landslides and then selected by King Kashyapa I (or his father) as the location of a new fortress capital in 477 CE. Guarding the staircase to an ancient fortress, six hundred feet above, are the two immense animal paws, rediscovered during excavations in 1898, all that remains of a crouching sphinx-like lion that guarded the palace entrance. Built with bricks and limestone, the lion’s full height was 45 feet. The rest of the creature lies in dust around the site, but even so, it gave its name to the place: “Sigiriya,” the Sinhala for “Lion’s Rock.” Gazing at it, the most irresistible connection is, of course, to the legendary Egyptian pharaoh, Rameses II, recalled by Shelley in his poem Ozymandias: I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Sigiriya, like the palace of the King of Kings, is as much a ruin as the lion paws that yet defend it. Each mitten is a sorrowful remnant exemplifying the accepted and formidable face of authority and statehood. From King Pandu Kabhaya founding Anuradhapura around 437 BCE, thereby marking the tangible beginnings of the Sri Lankan island state, to the inheritance enjoyed by the first Moriyan king, Dhatusena, in 463 CE, 900 years of solid national building had been achieved. Over those many centuries, an entire kingdom and culture had been consolidated, and an ancient state had thrived. Under, first, the Vijayan, and then the Lankbranaka, dynasties, a one-state government came to dominate the entire island, its grand writ running through countless villages from north to south, east to west, by means of the intricate bureaucratic, legal, and administrative structures that ordered its religion, water resources, taxation, and trade. At every stage, this sophisticated ordering of society was reinforced by caste demarcations that arose at least as early as 543 BCE with the arrival of the founding father, Prince Vijaya. With him came a variety of castes, most notably the Govigama – the landowners. A complex and hereditary feudal system soon developed from this, its voluminous obligations derived from work ordered by the king – the Rajakariya - for an astonishingly comprehensive set of occupations from toddy tapping to coconut growing, hair cutting to fishing. The state's managed bureaucracy had hierarchies so finely tuned that they even trickled down to village officials tasked with managing sluice gates and tanks. The arrival of Buddhism in the 3rd century BCE fortified and compounded these meticulous arrangements. That the state was strong – able to endure even the suicidal excesses of some of its kings, to shrug off occasional invasions, civil wars, and droughts – was in large part due to the enduring capabilities of the social order that underwrote the kingdom. This institutionalised aptitude allowed the nation to function when even, at times, the government itself did not. Even - all too often -  when the island’s very social order was manifestly unfair and destructive, it remained a firm and formative force. “Sure,” cried John Steinbeck’s tenant farmer, “but it’s our land…We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours.” Sri Lanka’s lion - most memorably exemplified by that built by the early Moriyan kings at Sigiriya - is an apt symbol of this decisive national trait, one so critical that it helps explain another key reason for what makes Sri Lanka Sri Lankan: not just Buddhism, nor its early radical water technology, or even its singular island status – but its ability to, as Winston Churchill put it, “keep buggering on.”  For the lion, grand and majestic though it is, is first and foremost resistant. Nothing defeats it. Never before the Moriyan kings had taken the throne had buggering on been such an imperative national trait. As the twenty-five monarchs of this third dynasty vacillated through their (usually brief) reigns, the state’s rulers became increasingly dependent on mercenaries to maintain control. The dynasty’s third king, Moggallana, made this something of a sine qua non when he overthrew his half-brother, King Kashyapa, with the help of mercenaries. He was not the first Anduraupuran king to do this: Ilanaga in 33 CE and Abhayanaga in 231 CE had done much the same. But in the Moriyan rule, mercenaries beca...

2. 

   28 Sept 2025

   The Jungle Spice Garden

   Field guide; saga; pharmacy; pantry - this memoir of the Spice Garden at The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy confirms that most elemental of Sri Lankan horticultural truths – that plants – all 7,500 of them found here – divide into just three categories. They are medicinal. They are edible. Or they are useless. Had we known this before things kicked off, life would have been much simpler; and plans far more straightforward. For, as with most plans, ours went off-mission within months, pursued across the neat pages of excel by the best intended of mission creeps. But God, as they say, is good; and no good God has much truck with plans of any sort. It took years to properly understand what a release this Plan Wilderness was; and just how unconditionally that most office Gulag of conditions had been trounced. Enslavement is a condition that takes time to undo. Even now, years later, I still place thankful and imaginary offerings of flowers and fruit before the alter of my imagined gods. As Mark Twain noted, “to succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” Servitude had begun to slide off, albeit unnoticed, just after the ceremonial signing of deeds to buy Mudhenna Wallawwa, the ancient crumbling plantation house and estate in the jungle northwest of Kandy. Over 30 people representing the sellers, attended by scores more attendants, met in an echoing room around a table that must have been related in some complex wooden way to that of State Banquet table in Windsor Castle. Signatories, witnesses, supporters, attestors, senior and junior legal counsels, tea bearers and not a few passers-by transmuted the transfer of a deed into a Dhurbar. The plantation came with twenty five acres of land that had long since reverted to jungle – though rampant hints of what once grew in smug order (rubber, cocoa, coffee, coconut) could still be glimpsed. The estate had been abandoned during the 1988 JVP civil war, the family fleeing to the greater safety of Colombo. And, as with all things tropical, the land settled back comfortably into the loving hands of nature, with a sigh, as if all that building and harvesting, planting, and living was in some inexpressible way, a trifling and passing distraction, now best forgotten. But possessing land is habit-forming. And soon enough our acquisition was followed by the purchase of more acres. And another house. Further acres, once part of the wider estate before it was decimated by Land Reforms, were incorporated on long term rents until the estate had more than doubled in size, the various land parcels threaded together by the slimmest of jungle tracks. One large plot was planted as vegetable beds but lay so trenchancy close to a misbehaved river that the onions, carrots, and sweet potatoes had little choice but to fester and moulder. Another was set aside to grow sandalwood trees. This, as it turned out, was a poor choice. Glamorous though the trees undoubtedly are, keeping them in the style to which they wish to become accustomed is harder even than keeping a mistress in Paris. The slightest variant in water resulted in sulky die-back. The tree’s high maintenance root system, which demanded the presence of other plant roots to attach to, meant a continual need to throw what amounted to hedonistic horticultural parties; and when all that had been sorted, Sandalwood Spike Disease arrived. An entire valley was planted out with thousands of bananas, all of which succumbed to Fusarium wilt. Lemon grass was seeded on well drained hill sides, most of which caught fire during the drought. Mushrooms, a great favourite of our auditor, were added - more out of good manners than any real attempt to be commercial. The old rubber terraces were recklessly entrusted to a horticultural bandit who lacerated the trucks to produce quick flows of sap, injuring the trees for years to come. Terraces of new rubber trees were established. “Harvest the latex,” advised one enterprising land agent, “and move up the value chain.” Make didoes,” he went on to suggest: “the few on sale on the island are all expensive imports.” Greenhouses of tomato and pepper were built and grown for the Maldivian hotel market until Spotted Wilt Virus raced through the plants, leaving behind such fruit as only the angriest chef might use. Several acres worth of nurseries to raise cinnamon, cloves and erica nuts were built, the tiny plants intended for resale onto the local agriculture board, though porcupine, gathering in force for nightly raids, had alternative ideas. As the estate’s plantation workers grew into a small army, supervisors with, it turned out, imperfect circadian rhythms, were recruited to manage and mentor the mildly mutinous troops. On the hottest days, sleep under the shade of mango trees seemed the only option. One manager, tempted to distraction by thoughts of ill-gotten lucre, was later to be seen gazing woefully out from behind the bars of the castellated Bogambara Prison in downtown Kandy, built by the British and home to a grisly record of 524 executions, including that of the glamorous Sura Saradiel, the island’s fabled Robin Hood. The only plants that readily seemed to work were spices. Ah – the wisdom of hindsight! The first of these rare flouring marvels were several acres of pepper planted to scramble up nitrogen fixing glericidia sticks. The vines proved valiantly resistant to animal attack; just glad to throw off long green clusters of pepper grapes. Plantations of clove trees also seemed to flourish; and in one distant corner of the estate, cinnamon, that most magical of all Sri Lanka’s indigenous spices, prospered with a lack of neediness that might move a hardened planter to tears of wonder and gratitude. Emboldened, we tried vanilla. Now as any spreadsheet junkie might tell you, vanilla is the sure route to becoming an overnight millionaire. As more and more people eat more and more chocolate, cocoa beans have barely manged to keep up with demand, with export prices oscillating from between $350 to $670 per kilo. Our first crop was interplanted with our sad, and still in-recovery, rubber trees – by Francis, an aged and devoted Catholic plantation worker whose ancestry, once deciphered from a tin box of antique family documents going back to the 1890s, came in part from Scotland. Ever the old fashioned Scot, Francis was as fond of whiskey as he was of God. Every vanilla cutting was blessed before it was planted, his hand waving the form of the cross across the ambitious little plants. Completing the bedding-in of this new plantation took some considerable time and it became clear that shade-loving though they are, the amount of shade they had to endure under the rubber trees was just all too much. Francis set to work, digging up each consecrated plant and transferring them to a new plantation, more open to sunlight, which corkscrewed down to a small pond. But the sanctified plants were no less miserable in their new spot, fighting off fungal rot, and periods where the water on offer was either too much or too meagre. And eventually they were moved a third time, though by now not by Francis who had left to meet his Maker. In their new position and under the mindful eye of Ananda, now our head gardener, the vines finally prospered. As the first vanilla pods emerged, so too did the late but gratifying realisation that the best jungle gardening to be had was to stick to spices. We divested ourselves of the wilder outlying parts of the estate and focused our planting efforts on the twenty five...

3. 

   3 Aug 2025

   Sun Kings: The Story of Sri Lanka's Icarus Dynasty

   The book recounts the kings of Sri Lanka’s second ancient royal dynasty – one that started with the best of guardian intentions; but which later came crashing down to earth. It is dedicated to Tim in Bristol, whose steady, thoughtful and bankable qualities are precisely what most of the sun kings in this narrative would have benefited from having in much greater measure. Far into the north of Sri Lanka, forty kilometres from Anuradhapura to the south, and fifty more to the western seaboard, lie the ruins of a shrivelled reservoir - Kuda Vilach Chiya. The tank is close to some of the country’s most iconic and mythical sites, including the landing place of Prince Vijay, paterfamilias of the nation, the palace of his forsaken native queen; and the country’s first recorded Singhala kingdom. Kuda Vilach Chiya sits on the eastern edge of what is now Wilpattu National Park. Reaching the spot is no easy matter since it lies within a deep entangled jungle for which special permission must be granted to gain access. Even after that, it requires a tractor to take you any closer to the site, and then a lengthy journey on foot. For countless centuries this has been leopard country. Wilpattu’s vast 130,000-hectare wilderness is one of the island’s best kept wildlife secrets, so well off the tourist trail as to exponentially nurture its hundreds of rare species of fauna and flora - along with many endemic species: the Toque and Purple-faced Leaf Monkeys, Golden Palm Cat, Mouse Deer, Dwarf Toads, Hour-Glass Tree and Wood Frogs, Ceylon Jungle Fowl and Ceylon Grey Hornbill. Even the ultra-rare Sloth bear can be seen here, attracted by the sweet golden fruit of the Palu Tree. But despite all these exceptional features, it is for its water that Wilpattu matters most.  Its name is more literally translated as the “land of Villu,” “villu” being lakes.  The whole area is pockmarked with shallow rainwater lakes.  But the lakes are eclipsed by Kuda Vilach Chiya, a much more deliberate water feature, and one that is hard to make much sense of at first. Today it amounts to little more than a long two-to-three-kilometre embankment overgrown by trees and grasses and breached in many places by migratory elephants.  It is all that remains of the extraordinary man-made lake that was constructed here sometime after 67 BCE by the first Lambakanna king, Vasabha. Hardier survivors from that time are two masterpieces of ancient aqua engineering, the creation of which allowed Sri Lanka’s builders to construct astonishingly vast water reservoirs.  These in turn would propel the 500-year-old kingdom into the political stratosphere. The constructions – Bisokotuwas – allowed water to exit a reservoir without putting so much pressure on the dam embankment that it would collapse. As a result, the size of the reservoir was able to scale up to unprecedented levels; and water of unimaginably enormous quantities could be collected to extend agriculture, support ever larger and more urban populations and produce crops whose surplus would rapidly and exponentially enrich the young state. The Bisokotuwas at Kuda Vilach Chiya are precision made structures, the stone slabs used on the inner face fitting so perfectly together that there is no room for even the modest weed to grow. Rising above it, the sluice tower itself can still be seen, part of the same remarkable lost laboratory of water. The same Lambakanna king, Vasabha, is also credited with the construction of the Mahavilach Chiya Wewa, a tank barely five kilometres away from Kuda Vilach Chiya, with a storage capacity of two thousands four hundred acres that even now is a key part of the modern Sri Lanka’s water infrastructure. Quite why two such large tanks were built so close to one another is a mystery. But their very existence, and that of the Bisokotuwas that made them possible, is the point that most matters. The area around Kuda Vilach Chiya, though remote even by Sri Lankan standards, bears the impact of multiple moments of serious history. Not for nothing was it chosen for its capacious reservoirs. It was once a place of some importance. Ten thousand years earlier and thirty kilometres north are hypnotic cave  paintings of the Neolithic age in Tantirimale. Two hundred or so years earlier the local temple, Thanthirimale Rajamaha Viharaya, marks the spot where the sacred Bo tree rested as it travelled to Anuradhapura from India under the protection of the Indian Emperor Ashoka’s daughter, Sangamitta. Some historians even believe that the site was once home to the lost kingdom of Panduvasdewu Nuwara, the early Vijayan realm that most immediately predated Anuradhapura itself. A monastery lies on the same site, its excavated gardens littered with stone containers created to contain gems, and the statues of gods and lions ruined when the country’s last unitary kingdom fell to invaders in 1215 CE. And in the nearby jungle ancient monastic caves crouch, decorated with a script that predated Buddhism itself – Brahmi. All around it stretch the flat and softly undulating lands of the country’s massive Dry Zone. Much of Sri Lanka is very dry - as if the land itself had been bleed white and hung out to dry. It is not perennially wet like Bangladesh. This is especially true of the Rajarata, the land most immediately around the Anuradhapura - stretching from Jaffna and Trincomalee to Puttalam and Kandy - that lay, like Kuda Vilachchiya itself, solidly within the control of the king. To achieve anything more than a rudimentary agricultural existence required the availability of year-long water, and plenty of it. Water, after all, permitted greater areas to be used for growing crops, and higher yield densities. It meant food surplus, profit, trade - and with it the capacity to develop an urban and industrial capability, underwritten by technical advances from construction and weaponry to horticulture, and transport. It meant that the state could better develop those organizational and professional skills essential for its success – commerce, industry, engineering, labour, planning, law, medicine, food storage, finance. Water management and irrigation, water storage and collection, water distribution – all this was what made the Anuradhapuran Kingdom possible in the first place. A defendable island state it may have been, and a centralised Buddhist one at that; but without water it could go nowhere, do nothing, be nothing. This focus on water technology was not a new preoccupation brought into being by the first Lambakarnas in the 67 BCE; but they, more than any other dynasty, ensured the rapid development of the resources and technologies that provided their domain with year-long water. The scattered Vedda and other pre-Sinhalese populations of the island had mastered the construction of small tanks before the fifth century BCE, and, with it, limited forms of agricultural production. This was the start of what is now known as the Tank Cascade system. Rainwater was collected in shallow ponds and crude distribution methods used t...

4. 

   2 Aug 2025

   The Great Dynasty: The Story Of The Kings Who Made Sri Lanka

   This book tells the story of the kings who made Sri Lanka – its founding fathers, all members of the Great Dynasty – the Vijayans.  And it is dedicated to Bianca, whose has founded, in her own utterly loyal, grand, wise and loving way, a Sri Lankan dynasty like no other. Sri Lanka’s first recorded monarch was to found a dynasty that would last over 600 years. Expelled from either Bengal or Gujarat (scholars argue, as scholars do) by his father, Prince Vijaya, the founding father of an eponymous royal family, arrived on the island in 543 BCE, his landing kicking off the start of recorded Singhala history despite its first 100 years being anything but plain sailing. Occasional bouts of regicide, lassitude, rebellion and navel gazing aside, the dynasty was as textbook perfect as it could reasonably be expected to be and Prince Vijaya’s thirty-six successors did all that was necessary to embed, improve, and make dominant the tiny state they had first instituted in the northwest of the land. Not one to sit upon their laurels, and with a flair for marketing well ahead of their time, the Vijayans relaunched their realm barely a quarter of the way through their term, branding it as the kingdom of Anduraupura.  They ruled it, according to the later Stone Book or Galpota Inscription, as human divinities, their almost-but-not-quite-divine authority, the result of personal merit earned by virtue of their unusual and holistically philosophical approach to life and governance. Their capital city would become one of the planet’s longest continuously inhabited cities, enriched by cutting edge industry, resources, structures, administrators, soldiers and all the other many disciplines critical to a successful ancient kingdom.  Expanding with elastic ease, their kingdom soon grew far beyond the Rajarata, or traditional royal lands, to encompass most if not all the island. To the east and south lay Ruhunurata, or Ruhana, a linked but junior principality founded around 200 BCE by Prince Mahanaga, brother to Devanampiya Tissa, the 7th or 8th monarch of the dynasty, and great-great-great-great-great nephew of Prince Vijaya himself. To the west lay the third, much smaller principality of Mayarata, another linked family fiefdom, said to have been founded in the fourth century BCE by Prince Vijaya’s nephew, Panduwasdev, the dynasty’s third monarch. Like light bulbs experiencing the almost reassuringly familiar power cuts and surges of the current Ceylon Electricity Board, a state company forever preoccupied by internal disputes, both principalities rose, fell and rose again, depending on quite how strong the Anduraupuran king was at any one time. All this was, of course, good wholesome leadership – but it was hardly groundbreaking.  Seen from the perspective of the Shang, Hittites Achaemenids, Ptolemaics; the Punts, Medians, Seleucids, Mauryas or other numerous successful ancient dynasties, there was little to differentiate the Vijayans from the usual preoccupations of sound hegemonic hereditary rule. It was only halfway through the span of the Vijayan rule that, in welcoming to the island, Mahinda, the Buddhist son of the Indian Emperor Ashoka, they did something that changed everything. In this, their simple act of hospitality, they were to remodel their kingdom to be so profoundly different to any other, anywhere, as to endow it with an authority and energy so inimitable, that, even today, it is protected and characterised by that misty encounter of 247 BCE. Not only did the  Vijayans welcome the young royal missionary; they took him, with fervent haste, into their hearts, and with it, his evangelising philosophy of Buddhism. Like all Buddhists, Mahinda did not acknowledge a supreme god, and despite the later shorthand references to Buddhism as a religion, it is more suitably described as a philosophy.  In welcoming Mahinda, the Vijayans crossed the line from standard overlords to philosopher monarchs governed by a formidable moral code and a preoccupation to achieve a state of transcendent bliss and well-being. If being an island was the first and foremost explanation for why Sri Lanka became Sri Lanka, Buddhism is of course, its second explanation. And a much more impressive one too, for it was a deliberate act – one that no less comprehensively than geography was to profoundly colour the country as if it had been dyed in Tyrian purple itself, that ancient and legendary dye, reserved by threat of death, for the clothes of the Roman emperors or the sails of Queen Cleopatra’s royal barge. Of course, not every king or subsequent island ruler made the moral imperatives of Buddhism his or her magnetic north; but most tried to, and all were ultimately judged against its teachings.  As they are still today by ordinary citizens in towns and villages across the land.  For however ordinary are ordinary Sri Lankans, they are also unexpectedly religiously minded too.  Religion today, to the astonishment of many observers, is holding its own. Right across the world, experts, and pollsters have had to rethink their view of what would befall religion as countries modernised. Atheists, agnostics and all who are religiously unaffiliated account for a shrinking 16% of the global population, even if the balance of believers has a whiff of the secular in their spiritualism. But as the west has become more secular, the rest has become less so - with God ever more likely to be best seen by Muslims or Hindus, but not Christians. Nor Buddhists, for Lord Buddha’s followers make up a shrinking 7% percentage of their share of the world’s peoples. But not in Sri Lanka, where Buddhism is estimated to hold its own at around 70% of the island’s population. Hardly surprising then that in repeated world polls, Sri Lanka is almost always to be found amongst the top five most religiously minded countries. Once, most of Asia was Buddhist - but such countries are now a rarity as alternative religions, politics, and secularism have shrunk their reach. Yet in Sri Lanka, Buddhism remains an indisputable force, supported by over six thousand monasteries, thirty thousand monks, and its own government ministry. Other gods retain a modest purchase. Christianity probably arrived sometime after Thomas the Apostle's visit to Kerala in 52 CE, though it took the arrival of the Portuguese in 1505 for things to really get going. Even so, just 7% of today’s population is Christian, less than the near 10% who practise Islam following the arrival of Arab traders in the seventh century CE; or the 13% practicing Hinduism - here since even before the Chola invasion of the tenth century CE. Buddhism and Sri Lanka are almost synonymous.  It is impossible to understand one without comprehending the other. The Buddhist mindset – that life is one of suffering, only alleviated by enlightenment through meditation, spiritual and work and doing good – is stitched invisibly into every fibre of island life. From its first beginnings , it has driven the country’s language and culture, morality, education, politics, family, finance, prosperity, health, work, and its approach to the environment. President...

5. 

   31 Jul 2025

   And That's How It All Began: Sri Lanka

   This book explores the very earliest days of Sri Lankan history and is dedicated to Simon, whose kind wisdom has taught me how history is a shadow that goes ahead. It took a refugee from Nazi Germany, with an interests in economics and Buddhism to note the singular connection between two of the most obvious characteristics that distinguish Sri Lanka. “Small,” remarked E. F. Schumacher in his eponymous book in 1973, “is beautiful.” It was economics, rather than Sri Lanka that Schumacher had in mind, but, as with all seismic observations, his simple statement lent a formative new way to understand previously inexpressible truths. For Sri Lanka is both small and beautiful. So small in fact that it could fit into India 50 times; into Britain almost 4 times or even Peru almost 20 times. Its nearest neighbour, Tamil Nadu, could accommodate it twice over, with land to spare.   Head a little further north and 10 times more people crowd into nearby Pakistan, or 6 more into Bangladesh. Schumacher’s only other book, published on his deathbed in 1977, “A Guide for the Perplexed”, is a study of how humans live in the world – but it could easily have lent its title to a mandatory guidebook for issue to every person who passes through Bandaranaike Airport, citizen or guest, VIP or economic migrant. For little about the island is straightforward, despite or because of its size and beauty.  Confronting it for the first time is like first encountering Rubik’s Cube, that infamous multi coloured rotating brick toy whose coloured ends appear so easy to organise into blocks.  The outcome, though satisfying, and apparently almost effortless, remains virtually impossible to achieve. Just below the surface of almost everything on the island, and simmering with delight, richness, chaos, or just plain thwarting befuddlement, lies the complexity of what is quite possibly the most byzantine and bewitching country in the world. The more you see, the more you wonder. Why? Why, for example, make a simple presidential election quote so convoluted and full of enough own-goal traps to risk making the spoiled votes equal to the good ones?  The 2024 presidential election brought almost 40 candidates forward for a preferential style vote of such complexity that the Election Commission had to issue a two hundred word note on how to mark the ballot paper correctly. But perhaps this is to worry unnecessarily for the country’s political system has, as horse riders might note, plenty of form.  By 1978, when the current constitution was adopted, it had already enjoyed 3 earlier ones, roughly one every 16 years.  Now regulated by this, its second constitution since independence, Sri Lanka possesses a governing document of such elastic resilience that it has undergone an average of one major amendment every second year and has still survived. Such political robustness is nothing less than what should be expected of an island whose circuitous history meanders through over 2,500 recorded years to take in at least 12 former capital cities, as many, if not more kingdoms, and 300 recorded kings, some half of whom were estimated to have murdered the other half.  Conundrums, reversals and the sudden appearance of polar partisan opposites have riotously followed almost every step of that wild journey.  The kings eventually made way for the world’s first elected female head of a modern state when in July 1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected Prime Minister.  Yet in 2018 a new President reimposed a four-decade-long ban on women buying alcohol. Given that barely 6% of the country’s supreme law-making body, its parliament, is filled with female MPs, this institutional sexism is understandable – but to fully explain it one needs to look little further than the fact that just under a fifth of all MPs have just one A level to their credit.  But there’s much more to the rule of law than exams.  Should parliament depress you, look to the country’s Supreme Court, a focused and resilient body that has thwarted attempted coups and power grabs through the decades. “Do I contradict myself?” asked the American poet, Walt Whitman. “Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.). And so too does Sri Lanka. Despite Nobel Prize winning scientists, Booker-prize winning writers, and architects that have profoundly reshaped how people live right across the tropical world, its best universities barely scrape into the top one thousand worldwide with a pedagogy that deliberately fails almost half its students. Honest domestic consumers eager to pay their electricity bill must first correctly guess which of 8 categories they fit into before they can pay up, proof, if ever it was needed, that here at least there is little pleasure to be had in being a consumer.  Used car prices have more than doubled in the past few years, and at any one time, eggs, onions, rice, milk powder or even turmeric have entered an Alice in Wonderland world, priced well out of the reach of ordinary people. Yet still the kiribath is made. This dish, of coconut flavoured milk rice, is unique to the island, the muse behind Anuradhapura’s Kiribath Stupa, a monument of almost unimaginable antiquity that once was said to house the sacred tooth relic itself: the left Canine tooth of Gautama Buddha.  The snack itself never fails to delight, a comfort food that pushes Butter Chicken, Shepherd's Pie, spaghetti or chocolate brownies to the back of any gourmet’s fridge - yet seems but a demure option in a national cuisine enriched by visitors that stayed too long - Portuguese  love cakes, Dutch lamprais, Lisbon pumpkin preserve, deliciously crispy yellow deep-fried Amsterdam koekjes , Tamil dosas, idlis and vada, roast paan, Keralan hoppers, English fish cutlets, Christmas cake, brown Windsor soup or tea itself. Given the island’s history, it is no surprise that so many national resources should be devoted to the health care of its people.  The remains of at least 5 ancient hospitals are found among Anuradhapura oldest ruins, and with them the tantalising Brahmi inscriptions of two physicians from the second century BCE. King after king built and enlarged the hospitals across the land and endowing them with revenue.  One even built a hall for several hundred patients, each to be attended to by a slave. The third century CE king, Buddhadasa, was so committed to health that he even took to doctoring himself, curing snakes and monks alike. Today the nation’s free universal Western health care system is among the best in South Asia.  Even so, patients, feeling some degree of illness, need first to self-diagnose before electing to see the correct doctor, praying all the time, as they hobble towards the hospital, that they are heading towards the right cure – a fate that eluded a recent government minister who fell ill after spectacularly drinking a ‘miracle’ COVID potion, concocted by a man who claimed to have received its recipe from Hindu goddess of destruction, Kali. Even so, it competes head-to-head with traditional medicine.  In village after village, town after town, the ancient medical practices of the land, are easily accessible, endorsed by the government, with their own doctors, ministry, training, teaching and hospitals, cures and alleviate the suffering of thousands of people, daily. Nothing is really what it seems.  The island’s geography makes it look as if the country itself is easy to grasp. Huge flat coastal plains ring each golden kilometre of the entire island.  Dotted with orderly coconut groves and orchards of cashew and mangosteen, it seems as if nothing could...

6. 

   1 Jul 2025

   Wicked, Nefarious, Iniquitous: Sri Lanka’s Most Notorious Kings & Queens

   This episode uncovers Sri Lanka's most wicked monarchs throughout its history, from Prince Vijaya to leaders after independence in 1948, highlighting their violence and impact on the island.

7. 

   30 Jun 2025

   The Jungle Hotel

   This episode explores the Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in Sri Lanka, offering listeners a behind-the-scenes look at this jungle retreat and its unique approach to hospitality.

8. 

   30 Jun 2025

   Inside Kandy: A Guide for Curious Visitors

   This episode explores Kandy, Sri Lanka's historical and cultural significance as the last kingdom to fall to foreigners, highlighting its unique identity and hidden secrets for curious visitors.

9. 

   30 Jun 2025

   A Visitor’s Guide to Galagedera

   This episode explores Galagedera, a Sri Lankan village, and its bustling high street, highlighting local businesses, healthcare, schools, and cultural elements that shape daily life.

10. 

    29 Jun 2025

    A Garden Companion To The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel

    This episode explores the feral gardens at Sri Lanka’s Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, touring the grounds and highlighting the unique flora and fauna found within, including various parrot species and frangipani trees.

11. 

    28 Jun 2025

    The Seven Wonders of Ancient Sri Lanka

    This episode explores the seven wonders of ancient Sri Lanka, highlighting their historical and cultural significance from 500 BCE to 500 CE, revealing the enduring characteristics of the nation.

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