In Xanadu

William Dalrymple, FRSL FRAS is an award winning historian and writer, as well as a broadcaster, critic and art historian. He has been the South Asia correspondent of the New Statesman since 2004. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.... Dalrymple was born William Hamilton-Dalrymple, a son of Sir Hew Hamilton-Dalrymple, 10th baronet, who was a cousin of Virginia Woolf. He was educated at Ampleforth College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was first a history exhibitioner and then a senior history scholar. Dalrymple has lived in India on and off since 1989 and spends most of the year at his Mehrauli farmhouse in the outskirts of Delhi, but summers in London and Edinburgh. His wife Olivia is an artist and comes from a family with long-standing connections to India. They have three children, Ibby, Sam, and Adam. Dalrymple's interests include India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Mughal rule, the Muslim world, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Jains and early Eastern Christianity. All of his seven books have won major literary prizes, as have his radio and television documentaries.
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