Latest Posts
When Anita Anand and William Dalrymple sat down to discuss making a podcast together, there was never really any question what it was going to be about. “I knew at once that it had to be about empire,” Anand, a
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, a thread. I put it to you that a great rabble of opinion writers, especially on the right, in the interest of criticising Australia’s lockdown policies, have magically and mindlessly transformed Sir Peter Ustinov
The former British hill station of Mussoorie, in the foothills of the Himalayas, affords the visitor two extraordinary views. Facing south, one takes in the seemingly endless Doon Valley, lit up at night by the city of Dehradun. That city
At the beginning of William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire, the award-winning Scottish historian states plainly the thesis of his latest work: that the Company’s “military conquest, subjugation and plunder
Not three months after it won a second term in power—and only five since it rewrote the rules of engagement in South Asia in a balls-to-the-wall display of reckless one-upmanship—the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi is showing once again
With the whole world lurching towards populism, nationalism, and, in some cases, outright authoritarianism, it can tempting to sit around drawing parallels between various deplorables. Marine Le Pen is to Matteo Salvini as Putin is to Erdoğan. Chan-o-cha is Thailand’s
The Rock disappears in the mist as Africa slowly emerges before us. To our right, Jebel Musa looms, one of two contenders for the southern Pillar of Hercules. Jebel Musa is in Morocco, though it is not to Morocco that
Against the cerulean blue of the South Australian sky, an octopus soars, its limbs flailing wildly. The man who has thrown it stands beneath, frozen, looking like a baseball pitcher, his leg just so. The spectators behind him crane their