‘Fun to read, fun to write’ – a review of Thomia by Rev. Marc Billimoria

Thomia at home in Rev. Billimoria’s study

The historian A. J. P. Taylor believed that history ‘is fun to write and, I hope, fun to read.’ He also asserted that ‘the original task of the historian is to answer the child’s question: “What happened next?”’ So for him, the task of the historian was to be a good storyteller. Richard Simon has certainly accomplished this task in his recently published magnum opus, which is titled Thomia: the entangled histories of modern Lanka & her greatest private school.

     His project, which has taken around ten years to complete, has been nothing less than a labour of love. Yet the author, though a product of the ‘School by the Sea’ himself, has not fallen to the temptation of producing a romanticized, nostalgic account of his alma mater. Nor has he succumbed to the impulse to present an idealized picture that glosses over the flaws and failures of the institution – an all too tempting option for historians of institutions such as S. Thomas’ College. Thus, for me, it is both a narrative and a critical historical study, as it not just tells the story of the past but also analyses those stories and critically examines some of their dominant interpretations. He has not been afraid to ask hard questions or to call out some false and bogus narratives, including some that for many Thomians have become gospel truths.

     However, this is not a revisionist history. Simon does not engage in deconstructing and demythologizing for the sake of doing so. He gives a description of the first 150 years of STC ‘warts and all’ – some warts exposed in a work of this nature for the first time, perhaps! – but this is exactly why the story is ‘fun to read’; as much as I am sure it was fun to write.

     The biographical details of some of the primary characters, including the revered founder himself and some of the early wardens, are very revealing and incisive. They help the reader to realize what challenges and obstacles the early pioneers of the school had to endure as they laid the foundations of what has become one of Sri Lanka’s leading educational institutions over the past 175 years. I particularly enjoyed, for example, reading about that most shadowy of the early wardens, the Reverend George Bennett, an almost mysterious figure who has thus far received very little attention in either C. H. Christian David’s history of the College, written in 1894, or W. T. Keble’s masterpiece of 1937. Bennett is the only warden, for instance, of whom there is no photographic record of any kind to be found in any extant source.

     What makes Richard Simon’s book stand out even further among similar school histories is that it is a history of the school set within the wider context of Sri Lanka itself. Thus, as the story of the school unfolds, so does the amazing tale of our island nation as it evolves from Ceylon (Crown Colony in 1802 and independent Dominion in 1948) to Sri Lanka (Republic in 1972 and Democratic Socialist Republic in 1978). It also shows how the College and indeed the Anglican church negotiated their place in the national fabric in the face of emergent linguistic and ethno-religious nationalism on the one hand, and the stark socio-economic realities of the postcolonial era on the other.

I conclude by adding my deep appreciation to Richard Simon for having produced this important contribution to the chronicled history of S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia. Anyone reading this unique history of the ‘School by the Sea’ in its 175^th year of existence will not be disappointed.

Rev. Marc Billimoria was Warden of S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, from 2014 to 2025. He is the author of 100 Years at Mount, a detailed record of the College for the years 1918–2018.