William Dalrymple

For other people named William Dalrymple, see William Dalrymple (disambiguation).

William Dalrymple

CBE FRAS FRSL FRGS FRSE FRHistS
Dalrymple in 2014
Dalrymple in 2014
Born (1965-03-20) 20 March 1965 (age 59)
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom[1]
OccupationHistorian, art historian, broadcaster, photographer
EducationTrinity College, Cambridge (BA)
Period1989–present
SubjectThe East India Company in 18th century South Asia and Afghanistan, Eastern Christianity and the Muslim world; Hindu and Buddhist art; late Mughal and Company school painting
SpouseOlivia Fraser
Children3
Website
williamdalrymple.com Edit this at Wikidata

William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple CBE FRAS FRSL FRGS FRSE FRHistS (born 20 March 1965) is an India-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, broadcaster and critic.[2] He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers' festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.[3][4][5] He is currently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.[6]

His books have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Wolfson Prize for History, the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński, the Arthur Ross Medal of the US Council on Foreign Relations, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. He has been five times longlisted and once shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction and was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History. The BBC television documentary on his pilgrimage to the source of the river Ganges, "Shiva's Matted Locks", one of three episodes of his Indian Journeys series, which Dalrymple wrote and presented, won him the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA in 2002.[7]

In 2018, he was awarded the President's Medal of the British Academy, the academy's highest honour in its suite of prizes and medals awarded for "outstanding service to the cause of the humanities and social sciences."[8]

Dalrymple was the curator of Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi 1707–1857, a major show of the late Mughal painting for the Asia Society in New York, which ran from February to May 2012.[9] A catalogue of this exhibit co-edited by Dalrymple with Yuthika Sharma was published by Penguin in 2012 under the same name.[10] More recently he curated the exhibition of Company style painting, Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, at the Wallace Collection in London.[11]

In 2012, Dalrymple was appointed a Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow in the Humanities by Princeton University.[12] In 2015, he was appointed the OP Jindal Distinguished Lecturer at Brown University.[13] He is also since 2021 an Honorary Fellow of the Bodleian Library and a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University[14] He was named in the 2020 Prospect list of the top 50 thinkers for the COVID-19 era.[15]

Dalrymple was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to literature and the arts.[16]

  1. ^ "William Dalrymple: We think everyone loves us in India, but it's a national myth of the first order". The Daily Telegraph. 29 August 2020.
  2. ^ "William Dalrymple". Penguin Books India. Archived from the original on 9 January 2007. Retrieved 30 June 2007.
  3. ^ Gopalakrishnan, Amulya (27 January 2009). "The Greatest Literary Show on Earth". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 3 February 2009.
  4. ^ "Looking for something special? Try treasure hunting in India". KiwiCollection.com. Archived from the original on 2 June 2008. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  5. ^ "Writes of passage". Hindustan Times. 30 January 2008. Archived from the original on 20 October 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2008.
  6. ^ https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/person/mr-william-dalrymple. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  7. ^ "William Dalrymple". Penguin Books India. Archived from the original on 9 January 2007. Retrieved 30 June 2007.
  8. ^ "Award-winning journalists, prehistorians and world-leading economists honoured with prestigious British Academy prizes and medals". British Academy. 20 August 2018. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  9. ^ Princes and Painters, Asia Society retrieved 4 October 2012.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference ZeeNews was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ "Forgotten Masters review – the natural history geniuses robbed by the British empire". The Guardian. 3 December 2019.
  12. ^ Short-Term Visiting Fellows, Princeton University retrieved 1 October 2012.
  13. ^ [1], Brown University retrieved 28 April 2015.
  14. ^ "Visiting Fellows 2023 – 2024". All Souls College, University of Oxford. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  15. ^ "The world's top 50 thinkers for the Covid-19 age" (PDF). Prospect. 2020. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  16. ^ "No. 64082". The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 June 2023. p. B9.