Like the cavalry of old, they raced on to rescue a stricken kingdom from itself. But what did the Lambakanna dynasty really achieve – and why were they overthrown? ,

In Sri Lanka, the expert is there right next to you - on the train, in the street, everywhere in fact. But what happens when you seek one in a doctor’s waiting room?

If you are English, do you really need sex? Can you not encounter la petite mort simply upon waking up?

Is May the moment to forsake madness and put aside all but the best supporting gods?

“To be or not to be,” is the refrain of several Sri Lankan government departments – but how can they – or that - free you from suffering? From cravings? From any need to cling to things?

Is life really what you best hear when you're absolutely still? And if so, does knowing the names of different trees help at all?

Unlikely though it sounds, there is a Perehera still grander than that of the annual Kandy Perehera – but what has it got to do with Eve and her serpents?

She was the pin-up of her times – but was it about the island’s first queen that caused so much disquiet, even now, and where might you still find her?

If too many cooks spoil the broth, what ingredients best make it all up?

Sri Lanka’s seven greatest wonders from ancient times include a palace to escape death, a dish, a book, and a fortress. But what made them so fundamental – to the nation and the world – as to earn their place in history?

A tree – and a trio of stupas are among ancient Sri Lanka’s greatest wonders. But why are any of these so important – not just to the island, but to the world?

Despite their iconic status, the original seven wonders of the ancient world pale in comparison to the seven wonders of ancient Lanka, the subject of the next three podcasts. But of them all, why include Panda Wewa, a reservoir now lost in the jungle, not from present-day Chilaw?

Sri Lanka’s gems are as perfect a thing for first nights, Dubai dinners and London cocktail parties as they are for crowns, thrones, diadems - and even my missing tiara. But should it be enough to merely murmur their magical names, or must you wear them too? It was Mr Wijeratne from the Water Board who brought the missing tiara to mind when he called on us this morning, his beaming presence foretelling progress on our fixed-line water connection. He is a generous, positive f

If walking the dogs is anything, it has to be “Ordinary Special,” especially when taken down a path of flame tree flowers. But of all these flamboyants, which is the most recalcitrant? There’s something very special - in that most ordinary of ways - about walking the dog, or dogs, in my case. It’s taken a few years to understand what the exercise is really about, but I believe that both the hounds and I have now properly taught one another how to behave so we all get the

Rich, salty, earthy, savoury, sharp – gorgonzola is not a cheese common to Sri Lanka, and yet its mere anticipation calls to mind on the island the seven stages of living. And of them all, how can you ever manage to make the last, last? I wake and see two yellow Minivets flying off into the jungle. And, by a dizzy sequence of associations too tiresome to make sense of, my mind is turned almost immediately to thoughts of gorgonzola. Gorgonzola is not an easy cheese to fi

From the Red Road to the Galagedera Gap, the two dozen acres around The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel demonstrate feral gardening at its best. So what might you encounter as you meander through its plantations and tracks? “Once, when I was young and true,” wrote Dorothy Parker in 1926, “Someone left me sad; Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad.” Fortunately, an early broken heart was not to be my fate. Gardens were. Plants. And especially trees. For it was

What was it in the fatal combination of new money, old suspicions, religious strife, mercenaries and regicide that brought the last Moriyan kings to ruin? For almost a third of the 236 years during which the Moriyan kings ruled over Sri Lanka, stability of a kind had been enjoyed. Sure, it had come at the cost of patricide, familicide, and the kowtowing to a global superpower – but 4 kings over a near 70-year period, averaging between them about 18 years apiece, was consisten

Family dramas nearly unsettled the first Moriyan kings until King Moggallana took over. Or so it seemed. What was it about the choices he made that so brutally undermined his successors? As Moggallana returned to his capital in Anuradhapura and seemed, on the face of it, to be restoring life to whatever had passed for normal before his brother Kassapa had murdered their father, it might have been hoped that national life would steady. But steadiness was not what lay ahead f

Famed for building the 8th wonder of the ancient world in Asia, what drove the great Moriyan king, Kashyapa, to plunge a sword into his own body? Given such flawed beginnings, it is surprising that Kashyapa, father-killer that he was, enjoyed a reign that lasted as long as it did – from 473 to 495 CE. Having completed the bizarre brickwork that turned his father into a building by walling him up, Kashyapa’s reaction to the patricide that had left him reviled by subjects and p

After decades of occupation and state madness, a great new Anuradhapura king set about putting things right. But how did he end up as the poster boy of the most notorious assassinations in world history? That so disappointing a dynasty was about to take office was in no way apparent at its beginnings. Indeed, the very opposite political calculation was what most wise onlookers might have offered for the early 450s saw Sri Lanka in turmoil – but with the cavalry just around t

What is it about Sri Lanka’s lion – cherished by the Moriyan kings at Sigiriya and elsewhere – that so perfectly captures one of the country's most critical national traits? To Tanzania goes the mane. Sri Lanka excepted, the land boasts more lions than any other country. 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