Sri Lanka past & present

Sandi Toksvig discovers the history of a teardrop-shaped island, perched off the tip of Southern India, that was once known as the 'Clapham Junction' of the Indian Ocean -- Sri Lanka. Guests: Priyath Liyanage, journalist and screenwriter; and Sir Christopher Ondaatje, writer and explorer.

Priyath Liyanage is Head of the BBC's Sinhala Service at the World Service. He left Sri Lanka in 1984 but returns several times a year. Priyath wrote the screenplay for acclaimed Sri Lankan film Ira Madiyama (2003), also know as August Sun, set in Sri Lanka during the mid-1990s. It is on Britain's Channel 4 on November 11th.

Sir Christopher Ondaatje was born in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in 1933 and lived what he calls"a pampered colonial existence" until he was sent to boarding school in England, aged 12. His new book Woolf in Ceylon: An Imperial Journey in the Shadow of Leonard Woolf, 1904-1911 has just been published. Leonard Woolf is admired in Sri Lanka for his novel Village in the Jungle, based on the time he spent as a civil servant at the height of British Imperialism.