On 26th September 1959 Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike succumbed to gunshot injuries sustained the previous day, when he was shot by an assassin at close range at his home, ‘Tintagel’. Plunging the nation into mourning, his death, just three years into his premiership, resulted in a vacuum in the leadership of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party he had founded in 1951. Senior stalwarts of the party had attempted, yet failed to ensure a cohesive strategy for the party and it fell on his young widow to enter the political arena, becoming the first female leader of a political party and subsequently creating history a few months later.