William Dalrymple (historian) Totally Explained

Everything about William Dalrymple Historian totally explained

William Dalrymple (born 20 March 1965 in Scotland) is a historian and writer.

Life

Dalrymple was born William Hamilton-Dalrymple, the son of Sir Hew Hamilton-Dalrymple Bt., a cousin of Virginia Woolf. He was educated at Ampleforth College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was first a history exhibitioner then senior history scholar.
Dalrymple is married to the artist Olivia Fraser and has three children. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Literature.

Interests and Influence

Dalrymple's interests include India, the Middle East, Mughal rule, the Muslim world and early Eastern Christianity. All of his six books have won major literary prizes. His first three were travel books based on his journeys in the Middle East, India and Central Asia. His early influences included the travel writers Robert Byron, Eric Newby and Bruce Chatwin.
   More recently, Dalrymple has published a book of essays about South Asia, and two award-winning histories of the interaction between the British and the Mughals between the eighteenth and mid nineteenth century. About these last two works, he's cited the stylistic influence of the narrative histories of Sir Steven Runciman and Simon Schama .
   He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, the New Statesman and The New Yorker .
   He has written a few articles for Time magazine. Among them he contributed with the article The Real Islam for their 2004 annual issue Asian Journey . He wrote an essay Business as Usual for the India Charges Ahead special issue commemorating 60 years of Indian independence.
   He is the founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival along with writers Namita Gokhale and Eleanor O’Keeffe. The festival is held annually in the Indian city of Jaipur .
   Dalrymple spends most of the year in New Delhi, India, but summers in London and Edinburgh. He is now said to be engaged in an extended four-volume history of the Mughal Empire .

Books

In Xanadu (1989)

Written at age 22 while Dalrymple undertook a journey from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem) to the site of Shangdu (Outer Mongolia), known as Xanadu in English literature.

City of Djinns (1994) His second book is the culmination of six years living in New Delhi during the '90s. He captures Delhi in the light of history starting from the independence going back to the period of the Mahabharata. The book has now been made into a play by Rahul Dasinnur Pulkeshi of Delhi-based Dreamtheatre [1] . Dalrymple is played by Bollywood and stage actor Tom Alter, with Zohra Sehgal playing the role of Nora Nicholson, a British national who prefers to stays in India after it achieves Independence.

From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (1997) His third book traces the Eastern Orthodox congregations scattered across the Middle East from their ancient origins, reviews how they've fared under centuries of Islamic rule, and discusses the complex relationship between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity in the region.

The Age of Kali (1998) This book is a collection of essays from a decade of travel around the Indian subcontinent. It deals with many controversial subjects such as Sati, the caste wars in India, political corruption, and terrorism. It was released in India as At the Court of the Fish-Eyed Goddess.

White Mughals (2002) Dalrymple's fifth book is social history, covering the warm relations that existed between the British and some Indians in the 18th and early 19th century, when one of three British men in India was married to an Indian woman. It documents the interracial liaison between English officer James Achilles Kirkpatrick and an Indian princess. The geopolitical context of late 18th century India is also covered.

Begums, Thugs, And White Mughals – The Journals of Fanny Parkes (2002) Dalrymple edited this historical travel book based on the journals of Fanny Parkes, who resided in India from 1822 to 1846.

The Last Mughal, The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 (2006) His most recent book. It covers the circumstances in which Delhi was taken over by the sepoys during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and the subsequent downfall of the last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar.

TV and Radio

Dalrymple has written and presented the six part television series Stones of the Raj (Channel 4, August 1997), the three part Indian Journeys (BBC, August 2002) and Sufi Soul (Channel 4, Nov 2005) .
   The six part Stones of the Raj documents the stories behind some of British India's colonial architecture starting with Lahore (16 August 1997), Calcutta (23 August 1997), The French Connection (30th August 1997), The Fatal Friendship (6 September 1997), Surrey In Tibet (13 September 1997), and concluded with The Magnificent Ruin (20 September 1997).
   The trilogy of Indian Journeys consists of three one hour episodes starting with Shiva’s Matted Locks which while tracing the source of the river Ganges, takes Dalrymple on a journey to the Himalayas. The second part City Of Djinns, is based on his travel book of the same name, takes a look at Delhi’s history, and last Doubting Thomas, which takes Dalrymple to the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where St Thomas, the Apostle of Jesus is closely associated .
   Additionally he's done a six-part history series The Long Search for Radio 4 . In this series Dalrymple searches to discover the spiritual roots of the British Isles. As 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."

Achievements

In Xanadu - 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award; Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award; shortlisted for John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize.

City of Djinns - 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award.

From the Holy Mountain - Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997; shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize.

The Age of Kali - 1998, won the French Prix d'Astrolabe in 2005.

White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (2002) won the Wolfson Prize for History (2002) and the Scottish Book of the Year Prize (2003); also shortlisted for the Kiryama Prize, the PEN History Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.)

Awarded the Mungo Park Medal in 2002 by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his outstanding contribution to travel literature.

The television series Stones of the Raj and Indian Journeys, which he wrote and presented, won him the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA in 2002.

The Long Search, his BBC Radio 4 series on the history of British spirituality and mysticism, won the 2002 Sandford St Martin Prize for Religious Broadcasting and was described by the judges as "thrilling in its brilliance... near perfect radio."

Received the Sykes Medal in 2005 from the Royal Society of Asian Affairs for his contribution "to understanding contemporary Islam."

Received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters, Honoris Causa, from the University of St Andrews (2006) "for his services to literature and international relations, to broadcasting and understanding."

On 20 February 2007 The Last Mughal won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for History and Biography.

Received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters, Honoris Causa, from the University of Lucknow (2007) "for his outstanding contribution in literature and history."

Received the James Todd award for his contribution to Indian history from the Maharana of Mewar Foundation, March 2008Further Information

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