The Golden Road with William Dalrymple
Join award-winning historian William Dalrymple as he unveils The Golden Road, a revolutionary history of how India shaped the ancient world. From the invention of zero to Angkor Wat and the spread of Buddhism to China, discover how Indian art, religion, science, and trade transformed global civilisation. A powerful retelling of India’s forgotten influence across Eurasia.
For over a millennium, India was the forgotten heart of Eurasia – a confident exporter of civilisation, art, and knowledge. From mathematics and the invention of zero to astronomy, music, literature, and mythology, Indian culture blazed a trail that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific.
Dalrymple explores how Hinduism, Buddhism, and Indian philosophy transformed Asia, from the temples of Angkor Wat to the spread of Buddhism in China. He reveals how India’s innovations in trade and technology helped shape global history, even funding parts of the Roman Empire.
About the Historian
William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapuscinski Prize-winning Return of a King. A frequent broadcaster, he has written and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA. He has also won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards, and been awarded five honorary doctorates.
Dalrymple is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has held visiting fellowships at Princeton and Brown. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and the Guardian. In 2018 he was presented with the prestigious President’s Medal by the British Academy for his outstanding literary achievement and for co-founding the Jaipur Literature Festival. He is the co-host of chart-topping podcast Empire with Anita Anand. William lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.
Join Our Mailing List
By submitting this form you agree to our Privacy Policy and to receive marketing emails, including e-newsletters and event updates from Bradford Literature Festival.