Inspiring Travel Writing from William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller In Xanadu when he was twenty-two. The book won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award.
In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for four and a half years researching his second book, City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His third book, From the Holy Mountain, was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997, and was shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters, a collection Dalrymple's essays on India written over the last ten years, was published in 1998.
William Dalrymples most recent book, White Mughals, won the Wolfson Prize for History. He is now at work on a Mughal Quartet, four books telling the story of the Great Mughals from the time of Babur to the last Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. The first volume will be published by Bloomsbury next Autumn.
Dalrymple was recently elected the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Asiatic Society. He is married and has a son and daughter.
In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for four and a half years researching his second book, City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His third book, From the Holy Mountain, was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997, and was shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters, a collection Dalrymple's essays on India written over the last ten years, was published in 1998.
William Dalrymples most recent book, White Mughals, won the Wolfson Prize for History. He is now at work on a Mughal Quartet, four books telling the story of the Great Mughals from the time of Babur to the last Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. The first volume will be published by Bloomsbury next Autumn.
Dalrymple was recently elected the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Asiatic Society. He is married and has a son and daughter.
Articles by William Dalrymple
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Dublin
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William Dalrymple
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Ireland
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East Coast Ireland
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Dublin
Sometime in the late fifties, the Dublin writer Brendan Behan was having a drink in the Cafe Deux Magots in Paris when he got into conversation with an American literary critic. The critic asked Behan whether he had ever known James Joyce. Behan...
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At Donna Georgina’s
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William Dalrymple
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India
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Goa
The history of Goa is written most succinctly in the portraits of the Portuguese Viceroys that still line the corridors of the abandoned convent of St. Francis of Assisi in Old Goa. The early Portuguese Viceroys are giants among men: chain-mailed...
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On The Frontier
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William Dalrymple
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Pakistan
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North West Frontier
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Peshawar
Violence is to the North West Frontier what religion is to the Vatican. It is a raison d'être, a way of life, an obsession, a philosophy. Bandoliers hang over the people's shoulders, grenades are tucked into their pockets. Status symbols here are...
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The Ganges
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William Dalrymple
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India
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Uttarakhand
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Corbett Park Reserve
"Actually," said Dr. Nigam, dipping a toe in the water, "it is all a matter of faith."The doctor waggled his foot in the current for a second, testing the temperature. It was very cold, and he quickly withdrew it. "Let me try and explain," he said...
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At the Court of the Fish-eyed Goddess Queen
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William Dalrymple
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India
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Tamil Nadu
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Madurai
Look down over the Tamil temple town of Madurai in the pre-dawn glimmer of a summer's festival morning, and you will see an extraordinary sight.The city sits in a broad, flat plain, as level and as green as a ripe paddy field at harvest time. Out of...
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In Judea
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William Dalrymple
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Israel
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Israel and the Palestinian Territories
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Jerusalem
"Look at it!" said Fr. Theophanes waving a hand at the dark rocky gorge beneath us. "There it is: the Valley of Doom. The Valley of Dreadful Judgement." Below us the monastic buildings of Mar Saba fell away in a ripple of chapels, cells and...
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St Lucia
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William Dalrymple
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St Lucia
"Yeh, you gotta watch out for the magie noir," said the driver of the airport taxi as he crashed first in, then out, of a pothole. "Fella from Soufriere I know: fell out with a local obeah [Black Magic] man. Bad business." "Why? What happened to him...
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Reunion
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William Dalrymple
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Reunion
On the fifth of April 1721 two pirate ships appeared off the coast of the Île de Bourbon, a mountainous Indian Ocean island known today as Reunion. Commanding the two ships was a French corsair, Captain Oliver Levasseur. The Captain was more...
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The Monks of St Anthony
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William Dalrymple
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France
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Provence
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The monks of St. Anthony's remain wonderfully Dark Age in their outlook and conversation. Exorcisms, miraculous healings and ghostly apparitions of long-dead saints are to the monks what doorstep milk deliveries are to suburban Londoners -...
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The Sacred Music of Fez
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William Dalrymple
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Morocco
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Northern Morocco
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Fez
In 1195, a travelling scholar and mystic from Spain arrived at Fez, the oldest of the imperial capitals of Morocco. Ibn Arabi was brilliant metaphysician, one of the great minds of his day: his admirers called him the Sultan of Gnostics, and ash-...