William Dalrymple (born 1965) is a Scottish historian, writer and curator whose work concentrates principally on India, the Islamic world and the history of European imperial expansion in Asia. He began his career with travel books such as In Xanadu and City of Djinns, before moving towards extensively researched narrative history. His writing combines archival scholarship with biography, eyewitness accounts and a strong sense of place, making complex political and cultural histories accessible to a broad readership.
His best-known books include White Mughals, an account of cultural exchange between British and Indian society in eighteenth-century Hyderabad; The Last Mughal, about the fall of Delhi during the Indian Rebellion of 1857; Return of a King, which examines the First Anglo-Afghan War; and The Anarchy, a history of the East India Company’s rise to power. His later book The Golden Road explores the spread of Indian religion, science, mathematics and culture across the ancient world. Dalrymple has received numerous literary and historical awards and is also a co-founder of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
