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William Dalrymple

Headshot of William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple is a writer and historian. His books include From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East; Nine Lives: in Search of the Sacred in Modern India; The Last Mughal; White Mughals; and Return of a King: The Battle of Afghanistan (which has been shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and PEN Hessel-Tiltman prizes). Twitter: @DalrympleWill

June 2026

  • Samantha Harvey, Tahmima Anam, Joe Dunthorne, Zadie Smth and Mark Haddon

    What to read this summer by Mark Haddon, Samantha Harvey, Zadie Smith and more

    Leading authors including Sarah Waters, William Dalrymple, Bernardine Evaristo and Anne Enright reveal their perfect holiday reading

October 2025

  • The Great Mosque of Gaza reduced to rubble.

    ‘One of the oldest urban centres on the planet’: Gaza’s rich history in ruins

  • Kabul’s InterContinental hotel.

    The Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet review – a monument to Afghan resilience

October 2024

  • Camel riders in a detail of a wall painting from the south wall of the Hall of the Ambassadors, from Samarkand State Museum in Uzbekistan.

    The Silk Road still casts a spell, but was the ancient trading route just a western invention?

    Two dazzling new exhibitions at the British Library and British Museum show the riches of the supposed east-west link but also highlight problems with the whole idea

September 2024

  • A painting of the Indian astronomer Aryabhata

    ‘In Britain, we are still astonishingly ignorant’: the hidden story of how ancient India shaped the west

    The flow of knowledge from India to Europe on everything from maths to astronomy has gone unacknowledged by historians

July 2023

  • Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first post-independence prime minister.

    Book of the day
    Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji review – charming, genre-defying study

    The academic’s discursive, wonderfully enjoyable account of South Asia’s journey from a British colony to three independent nations is a classic

May 2021

  • Bimaran casket British Museum

    Alexandria by Edmund Richardson review – the quest for the lost city

    The mystery of a trailblazing archeologist who faked his own death is finally unravelled

June 2020

  • Robert Clive statue

    double quotation markRobert Clive was a vicious asset-stripper. His statue has no place on Whitehall

    William Dalrymple
    Honouring the man once known as Lord Vulture is a testament to British ignorance of our imperial past, says historian William Dalrymple

December 2019

  • -- AFP PICTURES OF THE YEAR 2013 -- Two veiled Egyptian women, supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi, sit in front police standing behind barbed wire fencing that blocks the access to the headquarters of the Republican Guard in Cairo on July 8, 2013. Forty-two loyalists of Egypt’s ousted president were killed while demonstrating against last week’s military coup, triggering an Islamist uprising call and dashing the army’s hopes for an interim civilian administration. AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMSMAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

    The Buried by Peter Hessler review – life, death and revolution in Egypt

    This remarkable example of ‘slow journalism’ links the pharaohs with Egypt’s Arab spring

May 2019

  • Limousis caves in Languedoc-Roussillon, France.

    Book of the week
    Underland by Robert Macfarlane review – a dazzling journey into deep time

    Adventures, prose of great beauty and deep concerns ... a book that offers a new perspective on the human impact on our planet

September 2018

  • The Delhi Durbar, 1903. The Delhi Durbar, meaning, Court of Delhi, was a mass assembly at Delhi, India to commemorate the coronation of a King and Queen of England which took place three times between 1877 to 1911 at the height of the British Empire. In 1903 it was held to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra as Emperor and Empress of India. An illustration from Le Petit Journal, 18th January 1903. (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

    Book of the day
    The British in India by David Gilmour review – three centuries of ambition and experience

    A sumptuous spread of Raj nostalgia fatally ignores the argument that British imperialism was bad for India

January 2018

  • Joseph Conrad (1857-1924).<br>Mandatory Credit: Photo by Granger/REX/Shutterstock (8701334a) Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). Polish (Naturalized British) Writer. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924).

    Book of the day
    The Dawn Watch review – ‘redefines how we see Joseph Conrad’

    Maya Jasanoff brilliantly places Conrad as a pioneer of understanding the forces that shape the modern world

August 2017

  • The Rabindra Sarani, formerly known as Chitpur Road and regarded as Kolkata’s oldest street.

    The Epic City review – a love letter to Kolkata

    Kushanava Choudhury’s beautifully observed account of life in the West Bengal metropolis is full of humour and wonder

June 2017

  • Rooftop view of pedestrians on dirt roads among mud brick buildings<br>MALI - AUGUST 01: Rooftop view of pedestrians on dirt roads among mud brick buildings; Timbuktu, Mali (Photo by James P. Blair/National Geographic/Getty Images)

    Book of the week
    The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie English review – how precious manuscripts were saved

  • WilliamDalrympleDigital

    My writing day
    William Dalrymple: ‘The key rule is no drinking at all until the pen is down’

February 2017

  • The Sehwan Sharif shrine, the day after a suicide bomb attack that killed nearly 90 people.

    double quotation markIn Pakistan, tolerant Islamic voices are being silenced

    William Dalrymple
    The Sehwan bombing is a result of the Saudi-funded fundamentalism that has taken a grip in the country

May 2016

  • Bamiyan in Afghanistan. Photographs by Williams Dalrymple

    Do writers’ photographs show a side of their character not revealed in their books?

    William Dalrymple, whose teenage passion for photography was superseded by writing, puts the theory to the test

March 2016

  • gandhi statue bhubaneswar

    Book of the day
    Incarnations: India in 50 Lives by Sunil Khilnani – review

    Sultans, poets, business moguls… these engaging, warts-and-all biographies of great Indians down the ages capture the true heart of the subcontinent

November 2015

  • Elizabeth Butler. Remnants Of An Army

    Violence, victors and victims: how to look at the art of the British empire

  • Afghan trading family Silk Road

    Book of the day
    The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan review – history on a grand scale

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