William Dalrymple is an acclaimed historian and travel writer. He lives nine months of the year on a goat farm outside of Delhi.

Show notes

Selected links

• Follow William: Website | Twitter
• The Anarchy, by William Dalrymple
• A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
• In Xanadu, by William Dalrymple
• ‘Kubla Khan‘, by Samuel Coleridge
• The Honourable Company, by John Keay
• The Fall of Constantinople 1453, by Steven Runciman

Topics discussed

• How does William look back at his ten years at Ampleforth College where he went to school? 5:49
• How did William find himself in Delhi just two months before his nineteenth birthday? 11:38
• How has Delhi changed since William first met the city in 1984? 17:28
• William’s big travel journey while at university, where he retraced Marco Polo’s steps from Jerusalem to Kubla Khan’s palace. 18:35
• Romance of the road. 28:38
• Why did The Anarchy take so long to write? 30:44
• How was the British East India Company born and how did it subjugate India? 34:57
• What are the benefits of “narrative history”? 55:00
• What is William’s process for writing a book? 1:06:00
• What is the modern lesson we should take from The Anarchy? 1:09:30