Michael Roberts
Padraig Michael Colman is an experienced journalist and writer who pursued his trade in England and Europe before moving to Sri Lanka with his vivacious Sri Lankan wife Tiny and a coterie of dogs. They settled down awhile in Uva district; but have moved to the outskirts of Colombo in more recent times…. and have since moved back to Great Britain.
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The Dutch Burgher Union’s ‘home’ with a restaurant, bar, billaird tables and meeting rooms has been located centrally in Colombo for over a century at the junction of Bauddhaloka Mawatha (ake Buller’s Rd) and Havelock Rd running south-north across colombo — and thus withina stone’strow of many facilitees including the University of Colombo, Nomads cricket ground, the SL Broadcasting Corporation, Archives, et cetera. I have used it as a meeting spot often and in mid-September 2020 held a THANK YOU party for friends and relatives who had sustained me over a five-month covid-informed stay in Lanka.
So, its is a delight to feature its further growth in pictorial form…. Michael Roberts
Retd Brig. Hiran Halangode
This year the Armed Forces Remembrance Day and Poppy ceremony is due to be held on Sunday the 13th November 2022 at the Viharamahadevi park in Colombo. Since November is the month of Remembrance universally, it is commemorated world over.
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Hugh Karunanayake, whose title is “The Northways – Pioneering Planters” …. IN …. https://www.historyofceylontea.com/ceylon-publications/feature-articles/the-story-of-the-northways-pioneering-planters.html
The four generational links that the Northways had with the plantation enterprise in Ceylon ended with the death of the last of the Northways in Sri Lanka, that of Michael Northway in 1995. The progenitor of the family in Ceylon was Samuel Northway who together with the Winters, Bowmans, Hawkes, and Gotteliers, and others were induced to come over to Ceylon to establish the sugar industry in which these families were successfully associated with, in the Mauritius where they lived previously. All, or most of these families were of French extraction including the Northways.
The Samuel Northway bungalow now used as a guesthouse ……..
….. & Charles Northway and his wife on Deviturai Estate on their motorbikes. She with a Douglas and he on a Bat (circa 1910) 
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Filed under British colonialism, commoditification, cultural transmission, economic processes, governance, historical interpretation, island economy, land policies, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, plantations, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, wild life, world events & processes
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Joe Simpson, in Email Note responding to the Thuppahi Item https://thuppahis.com/2021/05/23/percy-colin-thome-and-the-composition-of-the-book-people-inbetween/
Most interesting, Michael. I’ve had the privilege of periodic correspondence with the estimable Ismeth Raheem in the past, and thanks to the kindness of Vancouver, BC-resident Ranil Bibile who agreed to be courier, once sent Ismeth a Giclée reproduction of a previously-unknown 1840s painting by Andrew Nicholl from his outbound voyage to Colombo, the original of which has been purchased by a British Columbia collector with whom I’d been in touch.
In regards to your attached bibliography, specifically the scholarly article on the 1915 communal riots that particularly affected the Galle-Tangalle area, while I was on VSO teaching at Richmond College (1973-74) some RCG colleagues and I were in Matara on our way to visit a rural jungle primary school in the Moneragala area, when we fell into conversation with an elderly local, who had been a fisherman all his working life [photo taken then].
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Somachandra Skandakumar …. writing from the hills of Uva in Sri Lanka
An Item at Roar.lk, where the title reads “We must remember Suriya Mal, even in this era of Manel Mal”
Doreen Wickremasinghe was a British leftist who became a prominent Communist politician in Sri Lanka and a Member of Parliament (MP). She was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka.
Doreen & the Rodi lass she ‘rescued’
Doreen Wickremasinghe was the daughter of two British ‘ethical Socialists’. While a student in London in the 1920s, she became involved in the India League and carried out other anti-imperialist work. Here she met Dr S.A. Wickremasinghe, then a radical Sri Lankan moving in Communist and radical circles while a post-graduate student in London.
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Uditha Devapriya
The Sri Lankan government has tasked the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute to conduct a review of the country’s foreign relations. While officials have not yet come out with details, the review is set to include a reconsideration of Sri Lanka’s ties with various countries, in light of recent international developments. The Executive Director of the LKI, Dr D. L. Mendis, has emphasised the need for a more robust foreign policy, observing that while “Sri Lanka comes first”, relations with the region, “especially India”, will have to be “a bit better.” In other words, while maintaining the country’s tradition of being a friend to all, it must prioritise its relations with its neighbourhood.
Ambassador Demet Sekerciglu 
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