At first impression, William Dalrymple is flying high. This patrician historian of British-Indian relations, who celebrates his sixtieth birthday this year, presides over his own literary festival in Jaipur and has amassed more than a million followers on X (many of them hailing from the subcontinent). In recent years, he has grown to become a totem of centrist dads everywhere. This month, he announced that his Empire Podcast – produced by Gary Lineker’s production company – had surpassed 55 million downloads.
Dalrymple’s outbursts can be venomous towards those who do not share his repugnance for the Middle East’s only democracy
Increasingly, however, questions are being asked both about the Scottish historian’s judgment and his professionalism. Before October 7, his social media timeline tended to be a gentle affair, a blend of historical factoids, exotic art and wry observations. He rarely troubled himself unduly with international conflicts, whether the Syrian civil war or Ukraine. But after the Hamas massacre, something flipped.
Israel was the centrepiece of Dalrymple’s Jaipur festival this year, which has just concluded. Those holding deeply critical views of the Jewish state were, shall we say, over-represented. There were contributions from the likes of Pankaj Mishra (author of The World After Gaza), Palestinian lawyer and writer Selma Dabbagh, Jerusalem-based Israel detractor Nathan Thrall and swivel-eyed pugilist Gideon Levy.
In an interview with Arab News, Dalrymple said: “What’s happening in Gaza is, in my opinion, the most appalling moral issue of our time and I’m very proud that we are giving this issue the prominence it deserves, and I think in a way that many Western literary festivals might be nervous to do. We are in a position in this country to speak frankly and openly about the horrors coming out of Gaza, and we intend to do so.” Let’s get this straight: is Dalrymple suggesting that criticism of Israel is repressed in the West?
As in life, so online. Scroll past the historian’s recent festival and podcast self-promotion and his social media account reveals a preoccupation with the evils of the Jewish state. At times, posts on the subject have been churned out at a cadence rivalled only by the likes of Owen Jones. By contrast, the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world is the war in Sudan, where as many as half-a-million people are dead and more than 30 million – half the population – require humanitarian aid. Dalrymple seems rather less concerned about that Muslim country.
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Instead, one typical declamation reads: “Enthusiasts for the mass-murder of Palestinians in the right wing press of course hate any coverage of IDF (Israel Defense Forces) war crimes and would prefer that the Israelis be allowed to get on slaughtering the people of Gaza without any critical coverage at all.” Similarly: “This is the Genghis Khan model of warfare: total destruction, mass slaughter of civilians, complete eradication.”
Hasn’t it occurred to Dalrymple that the mighty IDF could have carried out a “complete eradication” in a matter of hours if this had been its intention? Or that Genghis Khan was responsible for the deaths of 40 million people in an age when slaughter was carried out by the sword? Aren’t facts supposed to be a historian’s stock-in-trade?
Speaking of facts, here’s another example: “October 7th,” he tweeted some weeks after the massacres. “I am not aware of verified stories of rape (and I’ve checked with friends on the ground with the BBC).” Really? Dalrymple did go on to condemn other examples of Hamas depravity, adding in that tweet that: “There were a million other Hamas horrors of all sorts, and any and all of them are vile and sordid and horrific and utterly repugnant. I have condemned them repeatedly and am happy to do so again here.” He also told me that “since those tweets, much more information about sexual violence, on both sides has emerged, and I have been quick to condemn all of it.” On both sides? OK.
No expense was spared on Dalrymple’s schooling. The son of Sir Hew Hamilton-Dalrymple, the tenth Baronet of North Berwick, and Lady Anne-Louise Keppel, daughter of the ninth Earl of Albemarle, and third cousin of the Queen, he received his education at Ampleforth and Cambridge, where he was a history exhibitioner. This makes several of his friends all the more baffled that, when it comes to Israel, he seems to so quickly lose his perspective.
When I contacted Dalrymple to clarify his views on Israel and Palestine, he told me: “As someone who has both covered the conflict and specialised in the history of the region, writing and lecturing on the subject across the globe, I feel I have a duty to bring out the truth about what the Palestinians have been through.” He also said that he had “always been clear in my opposition and condemnation of Hamas”.
That may well be the case, but Dalrymple’s outbursts can be venomous towards those who do not share his repugnance for the Middle East’s only democracy. This has included myself. On one memorable occasion, shortly after October 7, he announced that I was an “Islamophobe and notorious hater of the Palestinians”. To his credit, he deleted the post when I messaged him directly about it. But it was too late; one of his more zealous followers had superimposed Dalrymple’s statement onto a picture of myself in black devil’s horns and a headdress, along with the moniker: “evil Zionist monster”.
Several mutual friends told me they had quietly muted Dalrymple’s timeline amid a general sense that the man has jumped the shark. One told me: “Obviously, Willy has been a devotee of the Palestinian cause for years but this is different. I’m just worried that his intemperate language and near hysteria is going to damage his credibility as a historian. It’s like he’s lost control.”
In August, bestselling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, one of Dalrymple’s old Cambridge contemporaries, publicly took him to task on Israel in a series of posts described by one commentator as “like watching a panther dismember a goat”.
Montefiore wrote: “You call the tragic Gaza war ‘unprecedented’ yet I question that. Five hundred thousand killed by Assad in Syria. Forty thousand civilians by the Assads in Hama in two weeks in 1982, let alone Iraq, Sudan, Congo.” Describing Dalrymple’s comments as “a mélange of facts and unfacts, hyperbole, inaccuracy and ahistorical musing,” he scolded that “exaggerations, untruths and lack of context are neither necessary nor helpful: They just stir more hatred”.
Montefiore also raised concerns about his friend’s fidelity to fact in the way he apparently relied on discredited Hamas casualty figures. “Forty thousand civilians killed but not a single Hamas soldier?” he remarked. “How does pretending Hamas doesn’t exist or fight help Palestinians? Ministry of Truth would be proud.” Ouch. Until recently, the two historians had been discussing a podcast collaboration. That idea seems to have taken a back seat.
The social media takedown was “like watching a panther dismember a goat”
Those who know Dalrymple well fail to understand why he has embraced such an activist stance on this particular issue. For all his claims to be a specialist in the Middle East, friends say that his 1998 book on the subject, From The Holy Mountain, is not a serious work of history but a travelogue in which he enjoys cups of tea with equally patrician contacts in lounge bars of dusty Arab capitals.
“You can’t be a serious person and throw this sort of language around,” one of Dalrymple’s old chums told me. “Of course, it’s not his area of expertise by any means – that is India – but it may affect the way people look at his work on South Asia.
“A lot of people who admire his work are worried about this. This isn’t the Dalrymple they admire. It’s like he’s leaving the mainstream.”
The social media benders are sad to watch. In pegging his credibility to erratic rants about the Jewish state, Dalrymple risks making himself kryptonite to his more circumspect intellectual peers. Could it be that for all his accomplishments, this high-flying talent is drifting too close to the sun?
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