A Life In Art

William Dalrymple

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Episode notes

In this episode we talk to William Dalrymple about his love of photography and his upcoming exhibition at Grosvenor Gallery, The Traveller’s Eye, taking place from the 1st to the 30th July 2021. We discuss his artistic heroes, his technique as well as experiences from his recent research trips.

William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, the Duff Cooper prize winning The Last Mughal, and the Hemingway and Kapucinski Prizewinning Return of a King. His most recent book, The Anarchy, was long listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2019, and short listed for the Duke of Wellington medal for Military History, the Tata Book of the Year (Non-fiction) and the Historical Writers Association Book Award 2020. It was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Bronze Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations. 

William’s previous exhibitions include; The Writer's Eye, held at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, Sunaparanta: Goa Centre for the Arts and Grosvenor Gallery, London in 2016, and The Historian’s Eye, at Vadehra Art Gallery in 2019.

An exhibition of William’s photographs titled The Traveller’s Eye will be displayed at Grosvenor Gallery in London from the 1st – 30 July 2021.

The Traveller’s Eye is a visual diary of black and white photographs, shot over the last couple of years by William during his travels and research trips for his 2019 book The Anarchy and his forthcoming book The Golden Road. William has followed the footsteps of the central characters in his books which has led him to travel extensively throughout the Indian subcontinent, modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

The images will be published on our website on Friday 2nd July. Images and photographs of some of the places & locations mentioned in this episode will also be available to see on our podcast and gallery Instagram pages; @alifeinart and @grosvenorgallery. You can also follow William on Instragram: @williamdalrymple. 

 If you’d like to enquire about any of the works in the show our email address is [email protected].

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