Historian William Dalrymple has revealed that he was left speechless after meeting Mick Jagger, who told him he was a fan of one of his books. Speaking in an interview, Dalrymple described the encounter at a party in Jodhpur, saying: 'I’m garrulous and chatty and quite good at instant social chitchat but I was so astonished by this that I sat there gulping like a fish in a fishbowl, unable to muster a reply.'
Dalrymple, an expert in Indian history, also shared his favourite historical figure: Mahendravarman, a seventh-century Pallava king in south India. He described the king as a playwright who wrote 'Samuel Beckett-like farces', a musician, a great drinker, and the first to build temples in stone. 'That’s who you want at a dinner party,' Dalrymple said.
Reflecting on his first travelogue, In Xanadu (1986), Dalrymple recalled a journey from Jerusalem to Mongolia funded by a Cambridge grant. He noted that much of what he saw—including sites in Syria, Xinjiang, and Afghanistan—has since been destroyed. 'All I’d tell young William is to realise how incredibly lucky he is and how fragile all these cultures and civilisations were,' he said.
When asked about an unanswered question from his research, Dalrymple expressed a desire to know more about the Buddhist monastery of Nalanda, a nine-storey library that attracted scholars from across Asia. 'If I had a Tardis, I’d probably head to Nalanda,' he said.
Dalrymple also recounted being shot at in the West Bank, Kashmir, and Kandahar, and briefly jailed in Iran. 'If I ever want to show off to a nephew, I tell them about being shot at,' he said. He cited a quote from Toni Morrison as the best advice he ever heard: 'We will be judged on how well we loved.'
