William Dalrymple

Travel writer and historian who has lived in Delhi for 25 years

William Dalrymple is a Scottish-born historian and award-winning travel writer, whose areas of interest include India, Pakistan, the Middle East, the Muslim world and Eastern Christianity. All of his six books have won major literary prizes including the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller In Xanadu (1989) when he was just 22. His other travel books include City of Djinns (1994), and From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (1997).

Dalrymple is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Asiatic Society, and is the founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. In 2002 he was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his outstanding contribution to travel literature. In the same year he won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA for his television series Stones of the Raj and Indian Journeys. His Radio 4 series on the history of British spirituality and mysticism, The Long Search, won the 2002 Sandford St Martin Prize for Religious Broadcasting.

Dalrymple’s latest book, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India reached the number one slot on the Indian non-fiction section bestseller list. He divides his time between New Delhi, London and Edinburgh. Dalrymple’s recent projects include a book of the history of the First Afghan War (1839-42), and curating Princes and Poets in Mughal Delhi 1707-1857 – a major show of the late Mughal and Company School painting for the Asia Society in New York, which is set to open in February 2012. He was also one of ten authors to contribute to Ox Travels the proceeds of which went to Oxfam.