[1] He is the great grand son of Lawrie Muthu Krishna, editor of the Ceylonese newspaper and founder of The Polytechnic vocational school.
[2][3] He is the grandson of Mano Muthu Krishna-Candappa, journalist and advocate for women's advancement in Sri Lanka.
[1][2] After school he joined the University of Cambridge on a scholarship in 1994 to study engineering but later switched to history and graduated in 1997 with a BA degree.
[1] He won the 2021 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding for Waves Across the South.
His prize citation noted that the book was 'a riot of ingenuity, a truly powerful and new history of revolutions and empires, re-imagined through the environmental lens of the sea.