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City of Djinns - A year in Delhi |
In this memoir, Dalrymple records with sympathy and understanding those people who crossed his path in the year he spent in Delhi, but just as importantly he gives a valuable exposé of India's history and culture and shows how 'the ghosts of even the most distant past still walk Delhi in the twentieth century'. Jan Morris is right when she says he is more a pilgrim than an observer, and we can benefit enormously from both.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 37 December 2006) |
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City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi |
The author and his artist wife Olivia, who did the attractive illustrations for this book, settled for a year in a rented apartment in a popular quarter of Delhi. The outcome is a wonderful mixture of ancient and modern: for example entrancing descriptions of the palaces as they were during the time of the Mughal Empire interspersed with perspicacious insights into the Indian way of life, fifty years after the end of the Raj. Fascinating!
(Jeremy Swann - bwl 11 October 2001) |
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From the Holy Mountain |
This is the interesting record of a journey undertaken by the author in the mid 1990s in the footsteps of John Moschos, a great Byzantine traveller-monk, who crossed the Eastern Byzantine world during the 7th century A.D. Combining reflections on things he saw both ancient and modern and in particular describing the various monasteries in which he stayed, he includes anecdotes that prevent it from being heavy-going for the non-erudite like me.
(Jeremy Swann - bwl 8 April 2001) |
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From the Holy Mountain |
Dalrymple sets off to follow in the footsteps of 6th century monk John Moschos, as he travelled round the Middle East from monastery to monastery in the days when the whole region was Christian. Dalrymple has done his homework and cares deeply about his subject. The result is a rich, erudite and elegiac account of people and places, of what once was and what, precariously, remains. Impossible to recommend it too highly.
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 22 February 2004) |
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From the Holy Mountain |
Eminent travel writer and scholar, Dalrymple takes us through thousands of years of religious and cultural history, on the ground, visiting and commenting on what is left of the past, examining eastern Christianity. It is a journey spiced with anecdotes, reminiscences and sympathetic conversations with monks to taxi-drivers, - touching and tragic - which illuminates not only religious conflicts of the past but those of the present. For desert lovers a must.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 28 February 2005) |
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In Xanadu, A Quest |
Reminiscent of Robert Byron's 'Road to Oxiana' (see bwl 3), the author humorously and eruditely describes the journey he made as a student in the late 1980s from Jerusalem to Xanadu in the steps of Marco Polo. He concentrates on the history and architecture of the regions he crosses at the same time as wittily recounting his experiences with the locals he meets and his exchanges with the girls (fellow British students) who accompany him in turn.
(Jeremy Swann - bwl 9 June 2001) |
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Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India |
It seems to me that everything Dalrymple touches turns to gold, in this case exponents of nine different religious traditions. Allowing them to tell their own stories, with only the lightest (and most lightly erudite) editorial touches, we are given a fascinating insight into the variety and strength of faith in present-day India. And the variety is truly amazing! Another book I can't recommend too highly!
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 59 Winter 2011) |
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The Age of Kali |
A totally fascinating series of essays, subtitled by the author 'Indian Travels and Encounters'. William Dalrymple has an uncanny ability to reach the people at the heart of the action, be they deposed maharajas, politicians, fanatical guerrillas or their heavily guarded leader and he writes powerfully and movingly about the mixture of hope, despair, enterprise, corruption, faith, nostalgia, injustice, violence, squalor and beauty of the India he knows and loves.
(Jane Grey-Edwards - bwl 5 October 2000) |
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The Age of Kali |
This - the fourth of the author's books - is largely a collection of magazine travel articles recycled, but none the worse for that. He covers places in India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan including the North West Frontier so much in the news recently. The pictures he draws are fascinating though often dominated by violence, political corruption and disintegration, suggesting sadly that there is little reason to be optimistic about the future in that part of the world.
(Jeremy Swann - bwl 13 April 2002) |
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The Age of Kali |
Although many critics still call Dalrymple a travel writer, he is so much more than that: a reporter, a historian, a political analyst, and in this book he seems to be 'the voice of India'. Never losing his objectivity or sense of humour, everything seems inexhaustibly fresh to him. As he says himself, this is 'a work of love', conveying his enthusiasm and affection to the reader. Magic!
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 38 February 2007) |
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The Anarchy: The relentless rise of the East India Company |
Anarchy seems to have infected Dalrymple's historical arc. As always, his scholarship is second to none in its breadth and depth but in following the vicissitudes of Indian, Afghan, Persian and other rulers, he often loses contact with what should be the overriding theme of the fascinating story of perhaps the world's first multi-national corporation. That this account ends in 1803, it only tells half the story. Perhaps he's saving this for Part II - Nemesis?
(Jeremy Miller - bwl 95 Winter 2020) |
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The Last Mughal - The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 |
In this last of his amazing books on Mughal/British India, Dalrymple has researched anew and in depth the events leading to the 1857 Mutiny. He sympathetically describes the heights of power and culture to which the three-hundred-year Mughal dynasty rose, as well as the depths to which it finally fell through its own decadence and that of the East India Company. The Mutiny finally marked not only their mutual end but that of an era.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 39 April 2007) |
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The Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan |
Dalrymple's account of the ignominious military and political failure that was the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839 is, at over 550 pages, history under the microscope. He draws, however, on new sources from other protagonists - the Russians, Persians and not least the Afghans themselves. The result is a welcome alternative to earlier colonial self-justifications. And the parallels with what is happening in Afghanistan today are terrifyingly clear. Do we never learn from history?
(Jeremy Miller - bwl 69 Summer 2013) |
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White Mughals |
An excellent account of eighteenth century India. It is quite a long book but I found it difficult to put down. It is well written and obviously very well researched. What interested me was the relaxed attitude of both the English and the Indians and it was not until the beginning of the next century with the advent of Wellesley and Victorian ideas that life began to change.
(Julia Garbett - bwl 21 November 2003) |
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White Mughals - Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-century India |
A sympathetic portrayal of the British when respect for a completely new culture was at its height, and before British society had hardened and tightened under the spreading influence of the Anglican Church and the influx of British 'memsahibs'. Against the background of Indian history and culture, Dalrymple has painted a touching and historically true love story, and shed light on the issues of racism, colonialism and globalisation which have become so current today.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 37 December 2006) |
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