The Historian's Eye About the Author William Dalrymple is a writer, traveller and historian as well as a curator, critic and one of the co-directors and founders of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. His first book, In Xanadu, written when he was twenty-two, was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize He is the author of several bestselling books, including Return of a King, White Mughals and Nine Lives.