Neville Jayaweera, courtesy of the author and The Ceylankan: Sir John, Dudley and the Abortive Military Coup of 1962
It was on a hot summer’s evening in 1974, on the manicured lawn of Sir John’s sprawling farm in Brogues Wood Kent, that the 
extraordinary conversation I am about to narrate took place. Even allowing for Sir John’s proclivity as a raconteur, the stories he unfolded to me that evening seemed, both from the human point of view as well as from the point of view of history, so extraordinary, that upon my return to Colombo I urged my one time colleague Godfrey Gunatilleke of the Marga Institute , to have Sir John’s stories recorded on tape for posterity. I believe that Gunatilleke sent one of the Marga staff, Lalitha Gunawardena, with a tape recorder to Kandawela, Sir John’s home in Sri Lanka, to have him on tape. Those priceless tapes, now more than 35 years on, may still be languishing somewhere in Marga’s archives. Continue reading
