Sam Dalrymple (historian)
British historian (born 1997)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Samuel Hew Tantallon Dalrymple (born February 1997)[1][2] is a Scottish historian, author, film-maker, activist, and social media influencer.[3][4]
Sam Dalrymple | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 1997 (age 29)[1] |
| Education | University of Oxford |
| Occupations | Historian, author, film-maker, peace activist, social media influencer |
| Notable work | Shattered Lands |
| Movement | Project Dastaan |
| Parents |
|
Early life and education
Dalrymple was born to public historian William Dalrymple and artist Olivia Fraser.[5] His paternal grandfather was Sir Hew Hamilton-Dalrymple, 10th Baronet of North Berwick,[2] and his paternal grandmother was a daughter of Walter Keppel, 9th Earl of Albemarle.[6] His father is a great nephew of Virginia Woolf and a cousin of writer Alice Albinia.[7][8]
Dalrymple graduated as a Sanskrit and Persian scholar from the University of Oxford.[3][9]
Career
Dalrymple along with Sparsh Ahuja and Saadia Gardezi founded Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the partition of India.[10]
Dalrymple's first film, Child of Empire, was a VR docudrama detailing the horrors of forced migration and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022.[3][11] His animated anthology "Lost Migrations" was a sell-out at the British Film Institute.[3][12]
Dalrymple's book, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, was published in 2025 by HarperCollins.[13][14] It has been received positively[15][16] and was a Best Book of the Year in the Financial Times,[17] NPR,[18] The Spectator,[19] The Week,[20] BBC History Magazine,[21] and History Today.[22] It was later longlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize[23] and shortlisted for the 2026 Orwell Prize for Political Writing,[24] the Eastern Eye Award for History,[25] the Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman,[26] and the Atta Galatta Book Prize 2025.[27]
Dalrymple also writes on art and architectural history, and received the "Champion of Travel Narrative" award from Travel + Leisure in 2024.[28] He served as a columnist at Architectural Digest India,[29] and publishes the history Substack Travels of Samwise.[30] In 2026, he guest-edited an issue of the art history journal MARG titled Beyond the Mughal Arch: Temples in Early Modern India, which examined temple construction and destruction within the Mughal Empire.[31][32]