Kate Chisholm

When Virginia Woolf’s husband ruled Sri Lanka’s jungles

Plus: Nigel Farage’s LBC moment

British writers John Lehmann and Leonard Woolf Photo: Getty

Tucked away in the schedules, just before midday, just after midweek (on Thursday), just four lines in the Radio Times, was one of those radio gems. Nothing remarkable on the surface, but every so often sparkling with insight, or a different way of seeing. Woolf in the Jungle (produced by Dan Shepherd) took us to Sri Lanka (or rather Ceylon) in 1904 when a young Leonard Woolf arrived on the teardrop island, with his wire-haired terrier Charles, 70 volumes of Voltaire, and absolutely no political, business or legal experience. He had been sent out to work as an officer in the Ceylon Civil Service, and very soon was posted to Hambantota in the south-east of the island, which he governed, single-handedly, for three years before returning to England. As the assistant government agent, Woolf looked after 1,000 square miles of mostly impenetrable jungle and almost ten million people, adjudicating their disputes, collecting dues and overseeing the land.

So far, so typical of the colonial experiment. But Woolf was unusual, partly because of his Jewishness, which meant he never really fitted in, always felt like an outsider, didn’t want to sit around drinking gin-and-tonics after dark or spend his afternoons playing tennis at the club. He was also a talented linguist and very soon knew enough Singhalese to understand what the victims and witnesses who were brought before him were saying without an interpreter. His perspective therefore was necessarily different.

His job meant that he was permanently on the move touring his fiefdom, and he had little opportunity to socialise with his fellow colonists. Instead he became fascinated by the jungle, which crept down from the mountains towards the coast, ‘looking like a great sea, over which the pitiless hot wind perpetually sends waves unbroken, except where the bare rocks, rising above it, show like dark smudges against the grey-green of the leaves’.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in