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May Blockbusters
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William Dalrymple is an award-winning writer and director of India’s Jaipur literary festival. He fell in love with India aged eighteen, and the country has been at the centre of his writing since.
His latest book, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, is the last in what he calls the East India Company trilogy, following White Mughals and The Last Mughal.
It tells what happened when the British Governor-General of India was convinced to invade Afghanistan – in order to save India, ‘the jewel of the British empire’, from an imaginary Russian threat. Of course, this paved the path for subsequent wars … and sheds devastating light on the one being waged now.
Dalrymple has immersed himself in literature telling the Afghan side of the story; the result is, according to the Guardian, ‘a racy tale of imperial misadventure and Victorian jihadism’ that shows us ‘ourselves as others see us’.
William Dalrymple appears as part of a double-bill with Anita Desai. Book your discounted tickets to both sessions here.
Who?
William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s greatest historians and the author of the classic In Xanadu, the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals and the Hemingway Prize-winning Return of a King. A master of microhistories, William Dalrymple has turned his hand for the first time to macro-history in The Anarchy.
May Blockbusters
Our fabulous double bills are back – bringing you three big nights of international writers, presented back-to-back.
From genre-bending fiction bestsellers to young adult authors with cult followings, and non-fiction superstars who’ll change the way you view the world … we’ve got a little something for everyone.
You can cherry-pick your favourite authors and book individual events, or make a night of it and see two authors at once. It’s up to you.
Where?
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