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William Dalrymple Profile picture
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15 Nov, 8 tweets, 6 min read
I am completely thrilled that our beloved @JaipurLitFest is returning to Jaipur after a spell online due to the pandemic. We are coming back with a truly spectacular line up of literary superstars from across the world

JLF 2022 to be held on the ground
indiatoday.in/education-toda…
In fiction we have this year’s Booker winner, the great Damon Galgut, his predecessors Monica Ali & DBC Pierre, Pullizer winner Jonathan Franzen and Turkish superstar and Booker shortkisteen @Elif_Safak
indianexpress.com/article/books-…
We have Charlotte Higgins talking about Greek Myths, Benjamin Brose on Xuanzang, Rob Macfarlane on nature writing and the underworld, Rupert Everett on Hollywood, Vidya Dehejia on Chola bronzes, Lisa Taddeo on Women & Colin Thubron on the Amur River.
zeenews.india.com/india/jaipur-l…
We have a special focus on archaeology: Rebecca Wragg Sykes on Neanderthals, Upinder Singh on ancient India, Cat Jarman on Vikings, Himanshu Prabha Rai on Indian sea power, Irving Finkel on Ghosts in Mesopotamia & David Wengrove on the Dawn of Everything

scroll.in/article/101052…
Tishani Doshi &Kei Miller will read from their new poetry;  Peter Stewart will reveal new links between Gandharan art & Imperial Rome;  Maryam Aslany will talk about the crisis in Indian farming & the new rural middle class & James Fox will reveal the hidden life of Colour
@akashkapur will reveal the dark underbelly of Auroville;  S  Vijay Kumar will talk about The Idol Thief &his campaign to bring home stolen Indian art treasures, @UnamPillai on Indian royals & Ilan Pappe will lament the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. From the 28th January.
More wonderful names to add to @JaipurLitFest 2022- fiction from @ShehanKaru, @aninditaghose & @thesailorsgirl; @MarcDavidBaer1 on reinterpreting the Ottomans, @TristramHuntVA on Wedgewood plus @MacaesBruno, Mukalika Bannerjee, @kunalbasu100 @AmbarishSatwik & @ShashiTharoor
Breaking news!
Andrew Lownie is coming @JaipurLitFest to talk about Mountbatten & why the UK gov is spending tens of thousands blocking the release of the Mountbatten papers!

Anger over ‘grotesque abuse’ of £600,000 case to keep Mountbatten papers secret theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/n…

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More from @DalrympleWill

William Dalrymple Profile picture
17 Nov
Out of quarantine and out into the wild volcanic Highlands of Central Java. The 7thC temples of Gedong Songo are strung up the ridge of an eerie volcano, where plumes of sulphurous steam belch out of the ground and mingle with thick cloudbanks scudding up bamboo slopes. Image
The temples themselves look sometimes Gupta, sometimes Pallava, with a hint of Kashmir- all topped with curving Chinese-style flying eves- a mixture you'd see nowhere in India and yet are contemporary with the earliest Indian stone mandirs in MP and coastal Tamil Nadu. Image
The guards, all Muslims, all reported regular night time sightings of Hindu queens and their spirit courts. Image
Read 6 tweets
William Dalrymple Profile picture
10 Nov
My beautiful great-grandmother Sophia Pattle Dalrymple by Watts, painted in 1852 in Little Holland House
In January 1851, the Victorian painter G. F Watts, then regarded as the country’s greatest artist- ‘England’s Michaelangelo’- came to stay at Little Holland House. This was a rambling dower house backing onto Holland Park & looking onto farmland that would soon become Kensington
Watts, according to his Franco-Bengali hostess, Sarah Prinsep, had been invited for “three days[ but]  stayed for thirty years”. He lived in the house, built  his studio there & frescoed the walls with allegories
Read 13 tweets
William Dalrymple Profile picture
7 Nov
Here is a piece I wrote on some of my favourite early Buddhist monastic sites

India’s ancient cave monasteries
To the north of Pune lie rock-cut complexes as startling as Petra but completely overlooked by tourists
ft.com/content/e0ce28…
"Open at one end, and entered by a magnificent 9m-tall horseshoe-arch, it still miraculously preserves its ancient wooden roof beams, like the wrecked keel of a prehistoric ark. These wooden shards crown one of the oldest rooms in the world..."
"Carved window frames, blind arches and tiers of fretwork mouldings give way to bamboo railings and balconies out of which half-naked Satavahana men and women peer, as if gazing out arm in arm from the terrace of their apartment block, surveying the valley below..."
Read 6 tweets
William Dalrymple Profile picture
4 Nov
Head of Shiva
Phnom Bok (Siem Reap)
Angkor Period, 10thC

Love the details here- the sharp line of the eyebrows, the finely incised iris in the eyes, the hint of beard at the chin, the metallic perfection of the skin & the otherworldly distance of the smile Image
Head of Brahma
Phnom Bok (Siem Reap)
Angkor Period
1st quarter of the 10thC Image
Head of Vishnu
Phnom Bok (Siem Reap)
Angkor Period
1st quarter of the 10thC Image
Read 4 tweets
William Dalrymple Profile picture
14 Oct
The Lord of the Dance

The Nataraja, Shiva as Lord of the Dance, is arguably the greatest artistic creation of the Chola dynasty. It is the perfect symbol of the way Chola sculptors managed to imbue their creations with both a raw sensual power & a profound theological complexity
The dancing figure of the god is not just a model of virile bodily perfection, but also an emblem of higher truths: on one level Shiva dances in triumph at his defeat of the demons of ignorance and darkness, and for the pleasure of his consort.
At another level- dreadlocks flying, haloed in fire- he is also dancing the world into extinction so as to bring it back into existence in order that it can be created and preserved anew.

Natraj- Chola,Tanjore 11thC
Now in the collection of the Guimet & Humboldt Forum
Read 5 tweets
William Dalrymple Profile picture
14 Oct
Masterpieces of Deccani Bidriware
17th-18thC
Now in the collection of the Humboldt Forum
Masterpieces of Deccani Bidriware
17th-18thC
Now in the collection of the Humboldt Forum
Masterpieces of Deccani Bidriware
17th-18thC
Now in the collection of the Humboldt Forum
Read 5 tweets

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