Remembering Richard Boyle
Photo courtesy of Sharmini Boyle
September 25 was the first anniversary of the death of the writer Richard Boyle at the age of 72. Richard was a prolific writer, perhaps best remembered for the multiple articles he wrote on a wide range of subjects in the Sunday Times, Serendib magazine and numerous other publications, and for his two books, Knox’s Words and Sindbad in Serendib. But prior to becoming a full time writer, his first love was film.
Richard first came to Sri Lanka in 1973 as assistant to the film director Lester James Peries to work on his historical epic The God King, the story of King Kassapa and Sigiriya. The film was a joint British-Sri Lankan production but it was beset by problems from the start. As Richard described in an article titled Against All Odds, the script was poor, the production team were at loggerheads, the British cast members were unhappy, the vast palace set built in Anuradhapura was absurdly over ambitious, finances were overstretched and everyone’s nerves were frayed. At one stage the production was abandoned and most of the British cast left, including Ben Kingsley who was to play the role of Kassapa. It was then revived, still with British actors in the main roles, but also featuring local actors including Ravindra Randeniya, Iranganie Serasinghe, Joe Abeywickrama and Vijaya Kumaratunga, not to mention 2,000 extras provided by the Sri Lanka Army.
In the end the film received mixed reviews and was not a commercial success. But it is still considered a landmark in the story of Sri Lankan cinema, not least because it was so ambitious and completed under such difficult circumstances. For Richard, aged 22, it was an amazing experience and the start of his lifelong association with Sri Lanka.
Richard had been born in England in 1950. His father was an eminent rheumatologist, and in keeping with the traditions of his time and class, Richard was sent to Haileybury, a well-known public school for boys, which he hated. His article titled “Those bleak, cold Haileybury days” is damning in its portrayal of the Victorian ethos of the school which still survived at the time. At 18 he dropped out of school and later enrolled at the British Film Institute. There he was exposed to the films of Jean-Luc Godard and other contemporary auteurs of world cinema. And it was there that he first saw Song of Ceylon (1935), the famous early documentary about the island, and even met its director Basil Wright. He also saw Lester James Peries’s film Nidhanaya at the 1972 London Film Festival. After finishing his studies, the chance to come to Sri Lanka to work with Lester James Peries on The God King was a dream opportunity.
Back in the UK after The God King, Richard pursued his joint interests in both film and Sri Lanka by promoting the island as a film location. This involved several return visits, scouting for locations and pursuing his contacts in the local film industry and led to his involvement in two more joint British-Sri Lankan film ventures, East of Elephant Rock (1976) and Rampage (1977).
East of Elephant Rock is perhaps best summed up by the words on the original poster which Richard had framed: “A tropical paradise halfway across the world. Where men lived for power… And a woman killed for love.” Richard worked with the producer and director Don Boyd on the film, which was featured at the 1976 London Film Festival but received mixed reviews. It is worth watching principally for its stunning Sri Lankan locations and for John Hurt’s performance before he became famous for his next role in Midnight Express.
Rampage was a joint enterprise between Richard and his friend Manik Sandrasagra. They co-produced the film, which starred Sri Lankan film star Gamini Fonseka and the British actress Mary Tamm. Richard wrote the script and Manik directed. Again, the poster says it all: “Death stalks a tropical town – elephants never forget!” Sadly, not a single copy of the film survives today.
Sri Lanka in the 1970s had its share of political and economic troubles but it was a golden era for Richard, especially in retrospect given the events of subsequent decades. He was hanging out with some of the most colourful personalities of the day such as Manik Sandrasagra, the charismatic but impetuous associate producer of The God King and Rampage. It was Manik who had met Richard off the plane when he first arrived in 1973 and who introduced him, as he wrote, “within a week or so of my arrival in Colombo, … to most of the key cultural icons of the day – Chitrasena and Vajira, Somabandu Vidyapathi, Manjusri, George Keyt, [as well as] Arthur C. Clarke and his friend Mike Wilson just prior to the latter’s reincarnation as Swami Siva Kalki.”
Mike Wilson was a diver and film maker who had accompanied Arthur Clarke when he first came to Sri Lanka in 1956. He was another larger-than-life character, a pioneer in diving and underwater filming in Sri Lanka and director of several Sinhala films.Richard collaborated with Manik and/or Mike Wilson on several other film projects that never materialised.
In the early 1980s, Richard met Sharmini Chanmugam, who was one of the first TV producers in Sri Lanka, television having been introduced to the country only in 1979. They married in 1984 and Richard moved permanently to Sri Lanka.
Richard was one of the first people I met when I arrived in Colombo in 1985 when he was recruiting extras for a Sinhala film, Golu Muhude Kunatuwa. The scene in which we appeared was a brief flashback to London in the 1920s, shot in the Grand Hotel bar in Nuwara Eliya masquerading as a London pub and starring Ravindra Randeniya.
In 1986, Sharmini and Richard set up their own video production company, Precision Productions. The first film they made together was Old Trails, New Paths about the Veddahs. Another, about the jeweller B.P. de Silva, led to Richard being commissioned to write the biography B.P. de Silva: Royal Jeweller of South-East Asia (Singapore 1989).
Precision Productions went on to make over 50 films, mostly commissioned by NGOs and other organisations, on subjects such as the environment, women’s issues and human rights. Richard wrote the scripts and Sharmini directed the shooting, which involved travel all over the island. Precision Productions continued until the mid-90s, when Sharmini joined YATV. In the meantime they had two sons, Asvajit and Kiran. Life became more Colombo-based and Richard turned to full time writing.
Over the next 25 years, Richard wrote hundreds of articles for the Sunday Times, Serendib (the Sri Lankan inflight magazine), Himal Southasian, Travel Sri Lanka (which he edited from 2003 to 2008), and numerous other publications including the Times Higher Education Supplement in the UK. These articles were always meticulously researched and covered a remarkable range of subjects: places in Sri Lanka both on and off the beaten track; historical accounts of the island, its peoples, its wildlife, its mythologies; the words this country has bequeathed to the English language; personalities of the past, as well as those Richard knew personally; and lesser known aspects of the island’s history and culture.
A lot of Richard’s writing focused on the encounters of foreigners (especially Brits) with the island of Ceylon. He had a particular interest in Robert Knox, the first and perhaps best known of these personalities, author of An Historical Relation of Ceylon (1681). Naturally cinema was another topic Richard wrote about frequently. As well as his own experiences in film, he also wrote extensively about Song of Ceylon (1935), Lester James Peries and his wife Sumitra, Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and numerous less well known titbits of cinematic history such as Satyajit Ray’s doomed sci-fi film project, The Alien.
Around the turn of the century, Richard volunteered to assist the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) with its ongoing revision, suggesting new words, updating existing definitions, identifying relevant citations and becoming the dictionary’s authority on words associated with Sri Lanka. In his work for the OED, Richard became increasingly aware of the impact that Robert Knox had on the English language, being the first to introduce multiple words relating to Ceylon to the language. This led to the first of his two books published by Visidunu Prakashakayo, Knox’s Words (2004). The book includes a retelling of Knox’s experiences in 17th century Ceylon, insights into the workings of the OED and an exhaustive account of the words which Knox introduced to the English language and their subsequent evolution in the works of later writers.
Richard’s work for the OED also led to his Concise Guide to the Anglo-Sri Lankan Lexicon, a 31-part series (hardly concise!) published in the Sunday Times between 2002 and 2004. This series covered all of the words of Sri Lankan origin or association in the OED, sorted into different topic areas. Our shared interest in Sri Lankan English brought me into regular contact with Richard when I was working on my Dictionary of Sri Lankan English (2007), for which Richard’s research was an invaluable source of information. We subsequently appeared together at the 2008 Galle Literary Festival.
Richard’s next book was Sindbad in Serendib (Visidunu Prakashakayo 2008) subtitled “Strange tales and curious aspects of Sri Lanka”, a collection of articles adapted from pieces which had appeared in the Sunday Times, Serendib and elsewhere. Like all his writing it was meticulously researched and covered a wide range of topics including a detailed account of the origins of the word serendipity and the multiple ways in which it has been used and abused and an equally exhaustive account of the anaconda (a South American snake whose name appears to be derived from a Sinhala word for an entirely different species).
Richard was also commissioned to write a history of the Grand Hotel in Nuwara Eliya published in 2012. For this he was assisted in his research by Ismeth Raheem, with whom he had a long association due to their shared interest in the history of the island, especially during the colonial period. Another person for whom he had great respect was Ian Goonetileke, librarian and bibliographer, author of the monumental five volume Bibliography of Ceylon (1970-83) with whom Richard maintained an extensive correspondence, all of which he preserved.
In later years Richard continued to live in the house he loved in Thalawathugoda with his beloved dogs, his extensive library and his collection of old prints and photographs of Ceylon. The house had a large garden sloping down to the Thalangama Lake and Richard loved the trees, the birds and the tranquility of the place, resisting all attempts to suggest that he should move somewhere more manageable. He became increasingly reclusive, especially after Asvajit and Kiran left home and Sharmini went to work overseas. He neglected his health, rarely ventured out and was increasingly saddened by the state of the island he had loved. By the time cancer was finally diagnosed, it was much too late.
As a chronicler of the island he made his home, Richard was a worthy heir to Robert Knox. He left an extraordinary and meticulously catalogued archive of writings on Sri Lanka. One must hope that this archive will be preserved and that some of his unpublished works will become available at a future date. In the meantime, anyone interested in discovering his work should seek out a copy of Sindbad in Serendib or search for some of the other titles mentioned in this article, many of which are available online.
