William Hamilton-Dalrymple was born in
Scotland and educated at
Trinity College, Cambridge. He wrote the highly acclaimed
best seller "In Xanadu" when he was 22. In the book, he follows
Marco Polo's journey from
Jerusalem to
Peking and back, with numerous adventures along the way. The book won a number of
awards including 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award.
In 1989 he moved to Delhi where he wrote City Of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. The book sympathetically details the the growing division between the old Delhi of the Mughals and the New Delhi of the rising middle class in India. He has also written a highly engaging series of essays titled The Age of Kali on the Indian sub continent which includes accounts of interviews with Imran Khan and Benzair Bhutto as well with members of the LTTE's elite female suicide squad.
His works are characterised by lucidity, an empathy with his subject as well as a subtle but engaging sense of humour.
Perhaps his most ambitious and scholarly work is From the Holy Mountain, where he attempts to follow in John Moschos' footsteps through the Middle East and presents a compelling case for Middle East's downtrodden Christians. He covers a wide breadth of topics- history, archaeology, theology, politics in this fascinating travelogue. His recent works include two television series for the BBC, both set in India, 'Stones of the Raj' and 'Indian Journeys'. His latest book is titled 'The White Mughals' and was recently released. He was elected the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, who has illustrated a number of his works, and has three children.