In Britain, there is national amnesia about the Empire

Even though William Dalrymple's City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993) is a travel memoir, for some of us it is also a lesson in history. For historian Dalrymple, the shift to travel writing came in the 1990s when he discovered the ill-fated love story between James Achilles Kirkpatrick, East India Company resident at the Court of Hyderabad, and Khair un-Nissa, a Persian noblewoman. And thus was born White Mughals (2002), which brought alive a lesser-known world when the east and west easily consorted in the age of the Empire.

- SNEHA BHURA

INTERVIEW/ WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, author

Ever since White Mughals, Dalrymple has continually invited the general reader to enter his stylistic, intriguing world of history, where oftheard stories are retold in a distinctive voice by tapping into primary sources previously unread. White Mughals, The Last Mughal (2006), Return of a King (2012) and The Anarchy (2019) bookend 20 years of his writing on the breathless rise and fall of the East India Company. Bundling these four books into a box-set called The Company Quartet was bound to happen. In a way, the set is dedicated to the memory of Bruce Wannel, Dalrymple’s long-time collaborator and translator, who died last year. He had helped unlock rare Persian texts, obscure manuscripts and calligraphies unearthed by the historian.

The Company Quartet

By William Dalrymple

Published by Bloomsbury

In conversation with THE WEEK, Dalrymple tells why it is time for him to turn over a new leaf:

Q Is The Company Quartet the last recounting of India under the Company from your end?