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; it was also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial
Prize. In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for six
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. From the Holy Mountain, his
acclaimed study of the demise of Christianity in its Middle Eastern
homeland, was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award
for 1997; it was also shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Award,
the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. A
collection of his writings about India, The Age of Kali, was
published in 1998.
William Dalrymple is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
and of the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 2002 was awarded the Mungo
Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his
‘outstanding contribution to travel literature’. He wrote and
presented the television series Stones of the Raj and Indian
Journeys, which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series
at BAFTA in 2002. He is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, and
they have three children. They now divide their time between London
and Delhi.
'Compulsively readable' John Julius Norwich, Observer; 'Everything a really good travel book should be: witty, learned and also very funny' Eric Newby
'Compulsively readable' John Julius Norwich, Observer; 'Everything a really good travel book should be: witty, learned and also very funny' Eric Newby
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