Thomia: Making of a magisterial tome for the School by the Sea
The ‘School by the Sea’ has had a momentous influence on the social fabric of our country. From S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia (before that at Mutwal), evocative of Eton and Harrow and the British public school tradition, have emerged men who were to steer the fortunes of Lanka in many a sphere.
It is apt that author and publisher Richard Simon, an old Thomian himself, has simply called the massive two-volume history of the school (intertwined with the history of Lanka) launched this week – ‘Thomia’ – ‘The Entangled Histories of Modern Lanka and Her Greatest Private School’. The book is magisterial, but not merely factual or nostalgic: “it’s not about schoolboy tuck-shop quarrels, or who scored 170 at the Royal-Thomian,” says the author with a smile.
Richard Simon signing books at the launch. Pic by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
Richard Simon, a product of STC Prep before going to STC Mount has worked as a writer and editor for over 40 years in advertising, publishing, corporate communications and related fields in India, Singapore and the UAE as well as in Sri Lanka. His previous books include Ceylon Tea: The Trade That Made a Nation, Sri Lanka: The Island from Above and the text of Dominic Sansoni’s
Sri Lanka: The Resplendent Isle.
The current volume (longlisted for the 2023 Gratiaen Prize) weaves a rich tapestry depicting how S. Thomas’ and its ‘dramatis personae’ over the past 174 years, have participated in Lanka’s fate – and how times changed for school and country over decades. The school was founded on November 7, 1845.
Commissioned in 2012 as a coffee table volume by the then Warden of the college, it then somehow got off that aegis, and became a private project of Simon’s.
The book is dedicated to the late Richard de Zoysa, who was Simon’s classmate at S. Thomas’, and who in fact first showed him how to be a writer. Simon’s own career at school was not one for the hall wall plaques (he admits he “got into trouble a lot”) but the school with its ‘over a hundred clubs’, fostered extra-curricular passions and helped him discover his true interests.
The book, 12 years in the making, got off the ground with long conversations with the Thomian community, including women associated with the school and teachers.
Documentary sources involved perusing all the issues of the S. Thomas’ magazine which first appeared in 1875 (now the oldest published periodical in the country). Wardens Prof. Indra de Soysa and Rev. Marc Billimoria allowed Simon full access to the library, which, albeit with some gaps, yielded volumes of material that took him over three years to go through. “I must have read hundreds of books and journals – all of them given in the Notes at the back.”
He went to the National Archives to go through issues of the Times of Ceylon before leaving for England, where he burrowed into the British Library, the School of Pythagoras at St. John’s College, Cambridge and the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
At the Bodleian, Simon read the correspondence between the school’s first Warden Rev. Cyril William Wood and the Bishop of Colombo and founder of S. Thomas’s, Rt. Rev. James Chapman – some of the letters crumbling in his hands. People from around the world also pitched in with material .
“I was writing (the book) simultaneously as I was researching – I didn’t wait to finish researching.”
Among the cast of characters in the book (altogether 905 people mentioned) are such contrasting personalities as four Prime Ministers (D.S. Senanayake, Dudley Senanayake, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and Wijeyananda Dahanayake), the pioneers of the Hela Havula movement, the Booker Prize winning author Michael Ondaatje, the Anagarika Dharmapala and Rt. Revd. Lakshman Wickremesinghe (Anglican Bishop of Kurunegala).
Magnificent due to its breadth, the book makes for a rich read packed with the ethos of a school built on values and tradition and several eras of modern Lankan history – brimming with insights and many a nugget to cherish.
Thomia: The Entangled Histories of Modern Lanka and Her Greatest Private School can be ordered online on thomia.com.
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