Talk:William Dalrymple

message: I have removed material from  that does not comply with our policy on the biographies of living persons. Biographical material must always be referenced from reliable sources, especially negative material. Negative material that does not comply with that must be immediately removed. Note that the removal does not imply that the information is either true or false.
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In regard to the 'Controversies' section, this was highly critical material presented as fact in a non-neutral manner - dependent on one source.--Docg 19:01, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section removed  

message: I have removed this section again. It was poorly cited and certainly biased. I have also locked this page, until editors can agree a neutral version here. I will unprotect when something neutral is worked out. --Docg 14:19, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Protected=

message: I agree with Qp10qp that the term "popular historian" used by Lao is unhelpful and unfair in this case since it is usually used about writers who rely on secondary sources while my copy of The Last Mughal has nearly one hundred pages of scholarly apparatus, has won a major history prize (the Duff Cooper) and has been widely praised for discovering a whole range of new primary sources in Urdu and Persian. How about we compromise with "narrative historian" a term which has been used about historians both in and out of academe such as Simon Schama, John Demos and Anthony Beevor? Lao is clearly a clever guy, but it seems to me that he has some sort of vendetta going here, as his contributions about Dalrymple have all been notably negative. I am new here, but I thought the idea was to attempt a voice of neutrality rather working off personal dislikes? --Aziz32 03:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have moved a comment from my comment page to here because there is no other way to reply.  Schama is a real historian.  He does not belong in the same category as Beevor or Dalrymple.  I have no vendetta.  I came across this webpage and saw it was massively unencyclopedia and I assumed either written by Bill himself or his publisher.  An opinion I have yet to change.  You assume good faith and I will too "Aziz".  I am all for neutrality which is why not one single opinion of mine on the man or his work is included - unlike the obsequiousness of the prior edit.  Since when does the use of secondary sources rule out footnotes (I assume that is what you mean by "scholarly apparatus"?)?  The Duff Cooper is, again, a non-scholarly award although scholars have won it.  Not notably historian's historians, which is a good thing and a bad thing, but real historians.  Again you assume bad faith when there is no evidence of it.  Nor do you have any evidence for that smear given all I have done is bring the article back to a more neutral tone - you cannot point to a single negative comment apart from the "popular historian" which I do not regard as negative.  I do not think the Sen comments are relevant but I did waver over it.  And by the way, by his own admission, Dalrymple did not find those sources in Urdu and Persian, nor can he read them.  He paid others to do the real historical work. Lao Wai 10:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure which sources we are speaking about here (I have not read Dalrymple's latest book), but he certainly did find some of the Persian and Urdu sources he used for White Mughals. And, contrary to what Lao Wai implies above, most of the footnotes and endnotes in that book are to primary, not secondary sources, the majority unpublished: it's quite a staggering achievement. Dalrymple is, in my opinion, a far superior historian to Schama, who makes many mistakes, particularly when trying to toss off TV programmes away from his specialist area. As for Turnbull, it appears to me that he quotes primary sources which have already been published, and does not, like Dalrymple, perform original scholarship himself. qp10qp 16:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not denying what he might have found - except that he did not as he admits that he cannot read either language.  He may have paid someone else to find them.  Good for him.  I don't think I have implied a thing about his sources.  I have said he is lucky that so many of his primary sources are in English as that seems to be the only language he can deal with.  Schama has written seriously good books like the Embarrassment of Riches.  He is a historians' historian.  Dalrymple has not.  But it is not that relevant and no doubt time will tell.  I could, if pushed, enquire about his other books where the sources are not in English.  I notice someone is claiming he has something to say about Christian-Muslim relations.  However we are now arguing over trifles.  I am happy enough with the article as it is.  I notice another red editor has turned up.  Lao Wai 18:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't let you get away with some of the things you are saying. We see him talking in Indian languages in documentaries, though I can't say how well he is speaking them. He's had a flat in India for years and regards himself as partly resident there. If you say that all the sources he has found were found by people he paid to find them, then you are calling him a liar, as he has said that he found some of the sources for White Mughals himself in Hyderabad. What would be your evidence to question that? Schama, far from being a historians' historian, has largely descended into being a dabbler in what ever interests him, and his books receive harsher reviews than Dalrymple's. Schama also fails to keep up with the latest research and depends too heavily on his own generalisations (he should never have allowed himself to go into print about the Anglo-Saxons, because he made a fool of himself on the subject). Christian-Muslim relations are not a trifle: Dalrymple's views on that issue are at the core of his writing: "At a time when respectable academics talk of a Clash of Civilisations, and when East and West, Islam and Christianity appear to be engaged in another major confrontation, this unlikely group of expatriates provides a timely reminder that it is indeed very possible—indeed it has always been possible—to reconcile the two worlds." qp10qp 21:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll take your word he talks a Indian language to some degree.  But I doubt it is Persian.  The fact he lives in a nice neighbourhood in Delhi doesn't mean much.  I know Indians who do so and can only speak English.  I am simply quoting my recollection of what he said.  He may have found some primary sources for WM but they would have been in English, wouldn't they?  Did the book use any non-English source materials?  Schama has descended but whatever he is doing now, he used to do very good stuff indeed.  He gets a completely different class of reviewer in a much tougher field.  He is not a popular historian in a minor area.  Schama should not, I agree, have wandered so far.  You miss my point about Dalrymple and Christian-Muslim relations - I very much doubt that D speaks Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Persian, Georgian or even Greek.  Those books, presumably, rely on secondary sources entirely.  Nor, of course, does it follow he has much to say of interest about Christian-Muslim relations.  The presumably forced relationship between an English ruler and a Mughal colonial subject is unlikely to occur again.  However none of this is relevant and unless there is a point here, I am happy to drop it. Lao Wai 17:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

text: As for this article, it is not very good, I agree. To improve it to good-article standard would take me a week of adding material, researching, referencing, and I don't think it is worth it. To balance the article, I would certainly add more criticism of him, but the material would be nothing like your criticisms. It would concern some of the controversies he has engaged in with people like V.S.Naipaul and Bernard-Henri Levy, and it would focus on weaknesses in his work which have been identified by critics—for example, the over-indulgent detailing in White Mughals and his inability to write effectively about contemporary figures, like some of those he treated in The Age of Kali. qp10qp 21:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I look forward to seeing what you can produce. Lao Wai 17:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Narrative history 

message: I believe that Dalrymple studied History as a Part I in the Cambridge Tripos but then did his Part II in Art History. This is particularly clear in 'In Xanadu' and in the 'Shadow of the Holy Mountain.'
However, I'm not completely certain of this. I don't have any references to confirm this which is why I wanted to raise the issue.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Applecart (talk • contribs) 21:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Education 

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thread_title: File:WilliamDarlympleNatArchives20070630.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

message: Dalrymple was born William Hamilton-Dalrymple, a son of Sir Hew Hamilton-Dalrymple, 10th baronet, who was a cousin of Virginia Woolf---------Are we sure about this? 
He was born in 1926 and she in 1882.--Shylock's Boy (talk) 22:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Wait, so Sir Hew (born 1926) was a cousin of Virginia Woolf? The way it's phrased now, it seems to be saying William Dalrymple (born 1965) is a cousin of hers, which seems patently impossible given the ages. Ni'jluuseger (talk) 10:52, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Woolf lineage? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Last paragraph of "Interests and Influence" says "He has just completed The Anarchy, a history of the Indian Subcontinent during the period 1739–1803 which saw the collapse of the Mughal imperial system, rise of the Maratha imperial confederacy, and the militarisation and rise of power of the East India Company.[23] It will be published by Bloomsbury in September."
As of when had he just completed it?  Apparently the information derives from a Facebook post of February 2019 (https://www.facebook.com/WilliamDalrympleTheAnarchy).  So why does the footnote refer to an article, published in 2015, referring to it as his "new book" to be published "next year"?
--Curmudgeonly Pedant (talk) 23:34, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "The Anarchy"--time unclear 

message: I have commenced a tidy-up of the Bibliography section:
* Cite templates will be used where possible.
* I prefer capitalization and punctuation to follow the standard cataloguing rules in AACR2 and RDA, rather than "title case".
* Links to potentially unreliable digitised copies may be removed. 
This is a work in progress; feel free to continue. Sunwin1960 (talk) 06:32, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bibliography 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Bensci54 (talk) 15:25, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 23 November 2023