TheEast India Company in 18th century South Asia and Afghanistan, Eastern Christianity and the Muslim world; Hindu and Buddhist art; late Mughal andCompany school painting
William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple (born 20 March 1965) is a Scottish historian,art historian, curator, broadcaster, critic and author.[2][3]
Dalrymple's books have won numerous awards and prizes, including theWolfson History Prize, theDuff Cooper Prize, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński, the Arthur Ross Medal of theCouncil on Foreign Relations, theThomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. He has been five times long-listed and once shortlisted for theBaillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction and was a finalist for theCundill History Prize. TheBBC television documentary on his pilgrimage to the source of the riverGanges, "Shiva's Matted Locks", one of three episodes of hisIndian Journeys series, which Dalrymple wrote and presented, won him theGrierson Award for Best Documentary Series atBAFTA in 2002.[4]
Dalrymple was the curator ofPrinces and Painters in Mughal Delhi 1707–1857, a major show of the late Mughal painting for theAsia Society in New York, which ran from February to May 2012.[18] A catalogue of this exhibit co-edited by Dalrymple with Yuthika Sharma was published by Yale University Press, then later in India by Penguin, in 2012 under the same name.[19] In 2019, he curated the exhibition ofCompany style painting,Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, at theWallace Collection in London.[20]
Dalrymple published a book of essays about current affairs in the Indian subcontinent, and four award-winning histories of the interaction between the East India Company and the peoples of India and Afghanistan between the eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century, his "Company Quartet". His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
His 2009 book,Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, a study of some of the more esoteric forms of modern Indian, and especially Hindu spirituality, was published by Bloomsbury, and like all his others, went to the number one slot on the Indian non-fiction best-seller list.[29] After its publication he toured the UK, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, Holland and the US with a band consisting of some of the people featured in his book includingSufis,Fakirs,Bauls,Tevaram hymn singers as well as a prison warder and part-timeTheyyam dancer widely believed to incarnate the godVishnu.[30]
Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, a history of theFirst Afghan War 1839–42, was published in India in December 2012,[19] in the UK in February 2013, and in the US in April 2013. Dalrymple's great-great-granduncleColin Mackenzie fought in the war and was briefly detained by the Afghans. Following the publication of the book Dalrymple was called to brief both the Afghan PresidentHamid Karzai and theWhite House on the lessons to be learned from Afghan history.[citation needed]
In 2019 he publishedThe Anarchy, a history of the Indian subcontinent during the period from 1739 to 1803, which saw the collapse of the Mughal imperial system,[31] rise of the Maratha imperial confederacy, and the militarisation and rise to power of theEast India Company.[32] It was long-listed for theBaillie Gifford Prize 2019, and short listed for the Duke of Wellington medal for Military History, the Tata Book of the Year (Non-fiction) and the Historical Writers Association Book Award 2020. It was a Finalist for theCundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Bronze Medal from the USCouncil on Foreign Relations.[33]
As at 2020 he was writing a book that is "a sweeping look at India's ideological colonisation of Asia, China and Europe during the short period between 250 BC to about 800 AD."[34] This book was published in September 2024 and is titledThe Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World.[35][36]
In 2024, Dalrymple stirred controversy when he criticized manyIndian academic historians for failing to communicate with the public, blaming that failure for the rise of what he called “WhatsApp history” (a pejorative for simplified or distorted history spread via social media). The comment provoked backlash from Indian academics, who argued that Dalrymple overgeneralized and overlooked structural issues in academia other than mere communication style.[37][38][39]
Dalrymple has written and presented the six-part television seriesStones of the Raj (Channel 4, August 1997),[40] the three-partIndian Journeys (BBC, August 2002)[41] andSufi Soul (Channel 4, Nov 2005).[42]
The six-partStones of the Raj documents the stories behind some ofBritish India's colonial architecture starting withLahore (16 August 1997),The French Connection (23 August 1997),Calcutta (30 August 1997),The Fatal Friendship (6 September 1997),Surrey in Tibet (13 September 1997), and concluded withThe Magnificent Ruin (20 September 1997).
The trilogy ofIndian Journeys consists of three one-hour episodes starting withShiva's Matted Locks which, while tracing the source of theGanga, takes Dalrymple on a journey tothe Himalayas; the second part,City of Djinns, is based on his travel book of the same name, and takes a look atDelhi's history; lastly,Doubting Thomas takes Dalrymple to the Indian states ofKerala andTamil Nadu, with whichThomas the Apostle of Jesus is closely associated.[43]
He has done a six-part history seriesThe Long Search forRadio 4.[44] In this series, Dalrymple searches to discover the spiritual roots of the British Isles. Dalrymple says: "In the course of my travels I often came across the assumption that intense spirituality was somehow the preserve of what many call 'the mystic East'... it's a misconception that has always irritated me as I've always regarded our own indigenous British traditions of spirituality as especially rich."
The BBC broadcast a documentary on 3 September 2015 entitledLove and Betrayal in India: The White Mughal,[45] based on Dalrymple's bookWhite Mughals.
In 2022 Dalrymple and the journalistAnita Anand created thepodcastEmpire, the first series of which examines the BritishEast India Company and British involvement and influence on India.[48] The pair had previously collaborated on the bookKoh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond. The Empire podcast went straight to No.1 in the UK Apple Podcast charts, had more than five million downloads in its first six months and was twice nominated for UK Podcast of the Year in theBroadcasting Press Guild Audio Awards.[49]
Dalrymple first went toDelhi on 26 January 1984,[50] and has lived in India on and off since 1989 and spends most of the year at hisMehrauli farmhouse in the outskirts of Delhi,[51] but summers inLondon andEdinburgh.[citation needed]
Dalrymple's wife,Olivia Fraser, is an artist and comes from a family with long-standing connections to India. The couple have three children.[52] Fraser is related to the Scottish actressRose Leslie.[53] Their sonSam Dalrymple is a historian and a co-founder ofProject Dastaan, a peace initiative.[54] The English journalist and authorAlice Albinia is his cousin.[55]
The television seriesStones of the Raj andIndian Journeys, which Dalrymple wrote and presented, won him theGrierson Award for Best Documentary Series atBAFTA in 2002.[66]
The Long Search, Dalrymple'sBBC Radio 4 series on the history of Britishspirituality andmysticism, won the 2002Sandford St Martin Prize for Religious Broadcasting and was described by the judges as "thrilling in its brilliance...near perfect radio."[65]
White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (2002) won the 2003 Scottish Book of the Year Prize.[64]
Dalrymple's article onmadrasas of Pakistan was awarded the prize for Best Print Article of the Year at the 2005 FPA Media Awards.[67]
AnHonorary Doctorate of Letters, Honoris Causa, from theUniversity of St. Andrews in 2006 "for his services to literature and international relations, to broadcasting and understanding."[69]
The Last Mughal won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for History and Biography in February 2007.[22]
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