What’s the Story: The Sri Lanka Podcast

Under its Moriyan kings, Sri Lanka soared to unequalled heights of artistic excellence. New ideas and philosophies had flourished.  So why was it that – overall – their rule had been, in the last analysis, disastrous?  

Few other countries are currently producing as much world-class literature as Sri Lanka. So which novels should you read?

What really makes Sri Lanka tick?  Perhaps these 5 very local cameos might provide a clue.  

When King Kashyapa took up residence in Sigiriya, he triggered a party that, like the ancient world itself, raced to its corporeal end with all the aplomb of the last serving of the lost martini on board the Titanic.  But what made it so extraordinary?

Kandy guards its remarkable story so well that it is all too easy to miss.  Yet squirrelled away behind its traffic jams and shop hoardings, history is not dead; not even sleeping or dazed. It is instead ever on the lookout.

Unlike the classical world, Sri Lanka's ancient wonders are not merely buildings, including as they do a painting, a monastery, a book, technology, a shrine, and a tree.  But why do they also include a lake?

How long is life, and what might you usefully do with the later bits?

Is it possible to reverse-engineer the last 5 decades and make Sundays special again?  Perhaps.

Forget elephants and even leopards.  What are the five great mammals of Sri Lanka that most people overlook to their eternal cost, and what story do they have to tell?

There's more to Sri Lankan cats than their famous leopard.  What happened to its lions, and which beast breaks such wind as to call to mind Jean Patou’s famous perfume, 'Joy'?

Hotels nurture hermiting - as Diane von Furstenberg, Ravi Shankar, or Coco Chanel might tell you.  But which ones should you select when planning your Sri Lankan itinerary?

Sri Lanka may be Sapphire Centre as far as the world is concerned – but where exactly might you now find its greatest stones, and what stories have they to tell?  

Whatever else is happening in the world, here there is a cake for tea, and birdsong from dawn to dusk.  But what else might you find?

It’s often said that to rule, you must be ruthless to excess.  But exactly what were the excesses created by these final Sri Lankan kings as to earn them a place on a list of wicked monarchs?

Spoiled for choice, selecting the naughtiest monarchs of Sri Lanka is an arduous job.  But why does the list begin with its founding father, and a latter queen who made a kitten out of Henry VIII of England?

To have a hoof in Sri Lanka is a privilege given to just a handful of species.  But what are they, and where might you find them?

Die-hard individualists fail to fault the remarkable variation among Sri Lanka’s different species of monkeys and lorises.  So what are their arboreal secrets? 

What might you discover?  There is much to find within the sprawling plantation gardens that disappear off into the jungle around Sri Lanka’s Flame Tree Estate & Hotel.   

What might you find as you amble gently around a home garden, wrapped in green and red, at Sri Lanka’s The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel? 

Enochlophobia may be one of ageing’s more agreeable symptoms – but what do you do about it when the Kandy Perehera is in full swing?  

It rains.  And it rains.  But why are Buddhism and rain quite so beautifully compelling, especially here in Sri Lanka?  

He hooted when least expected and claimed his rightful place in Sri Lanka.  But who was he, and what made him proud?  

Some of Sri Lanka’s most beloved spices came in the ships of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British – but why were they brought here, and how did they throw off the trauma of transplantation to prosper and proliferate? 

Sri Lanka’s secretive off-stage spices are every bit as treasured as its most famous ones.  But what are they, and how are they used?

Few people ever packed light as they headed to Sri Lanka.  But what are the spices that arrived in the carry-on baggage its visiting traders, travellers and superpowers?