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William Dalrymple Quotes

William Dalrymple is a Scottish historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a prominent broadcaster and critic.

His books have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński and the Wolfson Prizes. He has been four times longlisted and once shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.In 2012 he was appointed a Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow in the Humanities by Princeton University. In the Spring of 2015 he was appointed the OP Jindal Distinguished Lecturer at Brown University.In 2018 he was awarded the President's Medal of the British Academy.

✵ 20. March 1965   •   Other names William Dalrymple (historian)
William Dalrymple photo
William Dalrymple: 11   quotes 0   likes

Famous William Dalrymple Quotes

“I am basically writing for a general audience rather than an academic audience. So, I explain stuff, I don’t assume knowledge of any of this on the part of the reader. In a kind of general sense I suppose I have, when I am deciding how much needs to be explained, in mind my primary audience.”

William Dalrymple

In Amrita Ghosh, Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple http://www.cerebration.org/dalrymple.html, Cerebration.Org.

“I am a terrible linguist. It`s a great shame that I have not learnt Urdu and Persian.”

William Dalrymple

In Zeenews, William Dalrymple's book on first Anglo-Afghan war out in December http://zeenews.india.com/entertainment/bookworm/william-dalrymple-s-book-on-first-anglo-afghan-war-out-in-december_2501.htm, IANS, 12 September 2012,

“I am writing definitely primarily for an audience who don’t know India.”

William Dalrymple

In Amrita Ghosh, "Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple".

“Actually, when you have been in the country for a long time… whether it’s an Indian kid going to live in California working in a software company or whether its me coming to live here as historian and writer; to a certain extent you become a part of the country, and to a certain extent you remain always the person you were with the set of circumstances, history or personal history. So, I don’t think I can ever totally become Indian, but after twenty years I have certainly taken many of the Indian elements. In fact I am sitting talking to you right now in my cotton pajamas and at lunch time I will probably have dal and rice. In various ways I have taken on the life of Delhi; I think I am in the lucky position, in that I can talk to both worlds.”

William Dalrymple

In Amrita Ghosh, "Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple".

“The current Western puppet Hamid Karzai is from the same sub-tribe as Shah Shuja, who was a British puppet in 1839, It is the same war under slightly different flags.”

William Dalrymple

In Zeenews, "William Dalrymple's book on first Anglo-Afghan war out in December"
Pointed out that the Afghan tribe which resisted 1839 invasion now make up of the foot soldiers of Taliban.

“In the course of my travels I often came across the assumption that intense spirituality was somehow the preserve of what many call 'the mystic east'… it's a misconception that has always irritated me as I've always regarded our own indigenous British traditions of spirituality as especially rich.”

William Dalrymple

In The Long Search http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/05_may/27/long_search.shtml, BBC, 27 May 2002
On his search to discover the roots of spirituality in the British Isles covering the "divine supermarket" of Roman Britain with a plethora of gods - Celtic, Roman, Persian and a new god from Palestine called Jesus.

William Dalrymple Quotes

“Everybody has their own India and I think it’s a nonsense construction, “a real India”. The real India might be the India of the villages and certainly there’s a lot to be said of the fact that India’s heart lies in its villages. But I live 5 miles down the road from Gurgaon with kyscrapers and software companies and backoffice projects and call-centers. And that’s a very real India too, so I think “real India” doesn’t make much sense-- anymore than the real US with apple pie and Thanksgiving and family around campfires; is that anymore real than Manhattan?”

William Dalrymple

In Amrita Ghosh, "Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple".

Family , Thinking , Sense , Heart

“What has gone on in Iraq and Afghanistan has many echoes with what was going in this part of the world in 18th and 19th century - setting up of puppet governments, the lending of troops and the training of local troops in recent Western techniques. Anyone that knows the history of South Asia in 18th century can see million echoes in what has been going in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

William Dalrymple

In Zeenews, "William Dalrymple's book on first Anglo-Afghan war out in December"

World , History , Parting , Training

“The motives of people like Dalrymple, those who wilfully set out to deny the facts of the destruction of the Hindu civilisation of India, are the opposite. Their denial of the large-scale destruction and denigration of Hindu religion and culture by the Muslim raiders, invaders and conquerors of India is motivated by the deep-seated political aim of the Independence movement to brook no divide between Hindu and Muslim. It was for its time and for all time a noble aim. That was one of the things V. S. Naipaul said to the BJP gathering--that the project of Nehru and Gandhi to avoid going into the import of that history was in itself positively motivated. There is never any justification for one community in India to conduct a pogrom against another. Not then, not now. But surely the construction of history should be truthful. Suppression can only exacerbate the anger.”

William Dalrymple

Farrukh Dhondy, Does Willy Get It Wilfully Wrong?, Outlook India, https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/does-willy-get-it-wilfully-wrong/223746
About William Dalrymple

Religion , Time , History , Anger

“Interpretation of previously untranslated documents in the Indian national archives offers a wealth of new perspectives on the Uprising and its aftermath. Inevitably, such an account of the conflict between Evangelical Christianity and Muslims brings to mind contemporary conflicts, and helps us to understand them.”

William Dalrymple

Jules Smith, in "William Dalrymple: Critical Perspective".
About William Dalrymple

Wealth , Help , Understanding

“He is one of Britain’s most successful travel writers, whose highly entertaining books elegantly combine scholarship and story-telling, trans-cultural investigations and romance.”

William Dalrymple

Jules Smith, in William Dalrymple: Critical Perspective http://literature.britishcouncil.org/william-dalrymple, 2007, British Council.
About William Dalrymple

Travel , Books , Success

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