by David Sansoni OAM
STC Mt Lavinia, Stone House, Class of 1971

Epic in its reach, poetic in its lyricism, Thomia is a work of both history and literature. The book touches the soul and core of historophile, linguaphile and bibliophile; Christian, Lankan and, above all, Thomian.
It is not a chronicle of STC history: Keble and Billimoria have served that purpose amply. Neither, says Simon, is it intended to evoke feelings of nostalgia in Old Thomians wishing to relive the ‘best years of their lives.’ It is more ambitious than that.
The story begins in 1801, the year ‘modern, Western-style education’ was established in British Ceylon. Fifty years of Lankan history precede the foundation of St. Thomas’s College. This pattern – Thomian history presented against a backdrop of Lankan history – prevails throughout. Thomia examines, in great detail, the profound effect that ‘historical and political events affecting the country’ had on the College. It records how St. Thomas’ changed (often reluctantly) to accommodate the changing ‘habits, customs and hopes’ of the country’s rulers and her people.
Richard Simon’s Thomia is packed with inspiring and satisfying information about the many Thomian ‘sons’ who influenced the history of the country, beginning with the attainment of ‘mature estate’ of its first alumni. The reader is reminded that ‘of independent Ceylon’s first five Prime Ministers, four were Old Thomians... only the most obvious of many conduits through which the influence of Thomia flowed out into the country as a whole.’ Warden de Saram’s proclamation, on Old Boys’ Day, 1949, was justified: ‘Whenever a thing is done for the first time in Ceylon, it is a Thomian who is called upon to do it.’
The STC OBA’s service to and influence on College affairs is thoroughly documented, its story told in lavish prose. The reader will watch the association grow, from Warden Miller’s ‘desire’ (1886) and humble beginnings – formed ‘with a view to the strengthening of the ties which should bind a man to the place where…he has learned…the most valuable lessons of life’ – to the potent force for good it soon became and remains to this day.
Simon has some form as a historian: among his other works have been well-received histories of the John Keells Group (2006) and the Ceylon tea industry (2017). ‘My particular interest,’ he says, ‘is in the social, cultural and commercial history of the British period in Ceylon.’ Other books authored by him include Sri Lanka: The Resplendent Isle (Singapore, 1989, Times Editions) and Sri Lanka: The Island from Above (rev. ed. Colombo, 2017, D.S.R.). His short fiction has been published by Penguin India and Himal Southasian. He is also an experienced editor, and is especially proud of his work on Howard Martenstyn’s very successful illustrated guide, Marine Mammals of Sri Lanka (Colombo, 2013, Citrus).
Research on Thomia encompassed stints in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the archives of St John’s College, Cambridge, and the archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London. Simon also worked in the STC library and archives at Mount Lavinia for some five years, reading every available issue of the Magazine as well as old Thomian Fair and Royal-Thomian souvenirs and, indeed, any other published material on the College preserved there. He conducted further research at S. Thomas’ Prep and interviewed dozens of Old Thomians from every living generation. He acknowledges the help of Corinne King, daughter of the late revered Thomian master D.N. Pereira. Now resident in Australia, she remains the curator of her father’s trove of Thomiana, and generously helped fill some of the gaps in the College collection of back numbers of the Magazine.
As a researcher, Simon takes fresh perspectives on traditional conclusions: his book is something of a mythbuster. Yet rewriting history is not his intention. As he states in his preface, “For the first seventy-five years of its existence, the name of my old school was customarily rendered as ‘St. Thomas’ College’ in keeping with the spelling and stylistic conventions of the time. For reasons that are somewhat obscure (but explained in Chapter 39), a new convention was adopted in the mid-1920s and remains in use to this day.”
Thomians young and old will embrace Simon’s history and applaud him for telling it. They will affirm, as the author does, that Lanka has ‘enjoyed great profit of St. Thomas’s College’ and that ‘the rarer and more threatened the ideas and values the school enshrines come to be in the future, the more valuable a national resource it will become.’ Such readers will find in Thomia a document to treasure.
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