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? ,

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

Given Sri Lanka’s remarkable facility for naturalising anything it takes a fancy to, counting its spices, is a sure way to stir debates about everything from guilt and history to life expectancy and truth. Hear some of this, as we lay out a jungle spice garden all of our own at The Flame Tree Estate in the mountains beyond Kandy. Field guide; saga; pharmacy; pantry - this memoir of the Spice Garden at The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy confirm

Packing a punch quite out of proportion to its size, Sri Lanka is distinctive and magnificent in the most Byzantine of ways. But what is it that makes it so special – and how did it all begin? It took a refugee from Nazi Germany, with an interest in economics and Buddhism, to note the singular connection between two of the most apparent characteristics that distinguish Sri Lanka. “Small,” remarked E. F. Schumacher in his eponymous book in 1973, “is beautiful.” It was

Sri Lanka’s first kings laid the indispensable foundations of an entire island-nation state, their achievements evident in almost every aspect of life today. But who were they? Where did they come from? And where did they go? Sri Lanka’s first recorded monarch founded 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 o

A hiding place for kings, a turning point for invaders: what is it about this lofty hilltop jungle village that makes the ordinary quite so beautiful? Let's start with a little bit of retail therapy, which will take you down one of the world’s busiest high streets. And if you wonder about the example chosen – which you may, at first glance, consider eccentric, situated as it is in small village in the middle of an island of barely 20 million people in one of the least

Rescuing the nation from civil war and chaos, how was it that the returning Lankbranaka dynasty would then preside over the kingdom’s utter devastation, the like of which the island had never before endured? “If,” promised M.K. Gandhi, “you give me rice, I'll eat today; if you teach me how to grow rice, I'll eat every day.” Gandhi only visited Sri Lanka once – in 1927 – which may explain why, erudite though his aphorism was, it remained, all the same, a lesson that had alr

Sri Lanka was ruled by hundreds of kings and a handful of queens for over 2,000 years. But which of them were among its six most egregious baddies – and why? The awful thing about wickedness is just how interesting it is. Kind and benevolent rulers; admirable warrior kings; even the fumbling but kindly nice ones who build hospitals and live blameless lives – they all pale into guilt-wrenching insignificance when set before a list saturated by the sinful, iniquitous, and de