Empire - The Search for Truth William Dalrymple and Anita Anand in conversation with Bee Rowlatt

Empire: The Search for Truth
William Dalrymple and Anita Anand in conversation with Bee Rowlatt
The Empire podcast started in August, went straight to no.1 and now has more than 1 million downloads every month. Characterised by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand’s easy camaraderie and contrasting personas, the podcast looks at how empires rise, why they fall and how they have shaped the world around us today. In discussion with writer and journalist Bee Rowlatt, Dalrymple and Anand discuss why people everywhere are suddenly so interested in the business of the Empire.
William Dalrymple is the author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, Duff Cooper Prize-winning The Last Mughal, and the Hemingway and Kapuscinski Prize-winning Return of a King. His book, The Anarchy, was shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington medal, the Tata Book of the Year, and the Historical Writers Association Award, and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations. Dalrymple has been awarded five honorary doctorates, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has held visiting lectureships at Princeton, Brown, and Oxford, where he is currently an Honorary Bodleian fellow and Visiting Fellow at All Souls. He was presented with the President’s Medal by the British Academy and was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers for 2020 by Prospect Magazine. He is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
Anita Anand is an award-winning radio and television journalist. She is also the author of Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary; Kohinoor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond and The Patient Assassin, for which she won the Penn Hessell Tiltman Award for History Book of The Year. She co-presents the internationally acclaimed ‘Empire’ podcast alongside William Dalrymple.
Bee Rowlatt is a writer, and producer of cultural events at the British Library. Her travelogue In Search of Mary won the Society of Authors’ K Blundell Trust award and was the Independent’s biography of the year. Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad was dramatised by the BBC, and her play about Mary Wollstonecraft debuted in London's West End. Formerly a showgirl and BBC World Service journalist, her first novel One-Woman Crime Wave is coming soon
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[@amankumar-zx1eo]

Never get enough of these two wonderful people ❤

[@RJ-lk6qn]

Addicted to their podcast and it’s helping me through tough times.

[@71samrath]

Anita Anand love listening to you!

[@icarus6712]

The chemistry between WD and AA is magic. Listen to Empire.

[@hatosxxx2001]

Hosts of one of my favorite podccast

[@GiftofLifeAdventure]

Please pay attention to the Audio quality/volume. this is a deal breaker.

[@GCGKRN]

Intellectual fodder of best kind.. 👏🏻👏🏻

[@Shahi-bangalah_1352]

Wonderful discussion ❤

[@brysonyoung8273]

These two are (inter)national treasures

[@stephendaisley8645]

Talks a lot does William. Takes over, colonises the conversation, perhaps.

[@MrRick693]

Anita's beautiful

[@alphonso391]

And you don’t see the problem with giving India unlimited visas?

[@alphonso391]

I got as far in this as I could but you give away your prejudices when you express the hatred of Brexit.

[@williamvorkosigan5151]

This video is protected. It has zero thumbs down. I gave it a thumbs down and it still has zero thumbs down.

[@indiamusically]

It shows how dumb you are, and as evident from your other comments. KZbin doesn't show dislike numbers, it disabled it 4-5 years ago. There is nothing as such 'protected'. Read history books written by other nationals like of USA, Canadian. Proofs and facts are there.

[@isotropisch82]

Thumbs down don't show on KZbin for a few years now.

[@williamvorkosigan5151]

@@isotropisch82 There was an app to show the thumbs up and thumbs down the day it was taken off. I can see thumbs down and so can you with the chrome extension.

[@KippGenerator]

Thumbs down? You're crazy.

[@wolfsettgast4945]

stupid complacency

[@williamvorkosigan5151]

I gave this Podcast a cautious go. It turned out to be as biased anti British as I expected. Anita Anand, is an example of despite being born in England she failed to assimilate. Having every privilege and advantage that she could wish for, she speaks Hindi like the native she isn't. Married another second generation coloniser of England from the Sub Continent. Despite being born and brought up in England she here dresses more like an Indian. Now she berates Britain for it's wonderful history. She does not acknowledge that the British Empire was the greatest net force for good the world has ever seen. Without the British Empire, it is impossible to imagine India existing in anything like it's current form. She is as English as Modi.

[@Archis_Anupam]

correct, we could have probably been in better condition.

[@williamvorkosigan5151]

@@Archis_Anupam Ah, it begins. Wild claims unsupported by evidence or even logic. India was when the magnificent British arrived a group of waring Princeling states with different religions and languages. Without the unifying power of the English language, how could it ever have unified? If the English were not there, then the French would have taken their place and ask French colonies how they got on. Perhaps you would have preferred a Mughal Empire forcibly converting the sub continent to Islam. If that isn't your cup of tea, then the Maratha Empire, converting everyone to Hinduism. The British... well you know the list of benefits that they gave you. I understand that India and Pakistan are extremely anti British and that your education system encourages a myth past were all your problems are the fault of the British. Then your elites go to UK universities to get educated by self haters who encourage you to believe that false narrative. Only children blame others for their problems. Even before Britain peacefully left (near 80 years ago), you decided that you couldn't live in the same country as a large portion of India. Then to prove it, you demonstrated exactly how civilised you were on people traveling North and South.

[@williamvorkosigan5151]

@@Archis_Anupam I suspect I will have to block you but let's see if you are someone with whom I can have a rational conversation with. Consider these two statements. 1. Britain was plundering the wealth of it's colonies. 2. After two world wars, Britain in large part divested itself of it's colonies because it could no longer afford to maintain them. These two statements seem incompatible. Can you say something reasonable that we can build on with regard these clearly logically inconsistent statements.

[@123rohank]

@@williamvorkosigan5151 The two statements you made are not necessarily mutually exclusive because they occurred over different time periods. The loot and pilferage of the British Raj was not an isolated event but occurred over 190 years of Indian history. Its also true that the British could no longer afford to maintain their colonies as essentially they were at their lowest ebb in terms of the power they had in the 18th and 19th century which had drastically declined post World war 1 and 2. Also, the fact that you only chose to discredit the brown-faced individual when essentially there were two British people here having the same stand on British colonialism shows a bias which kind of makes me question this so-called 'cautious' attempt you made to listen to the Podcast. I understand that its sometimes difficult to face the bitter truth about your country's past but it doesn't make you any less of a patriot to confront the same. Still, wish you the best if you choose to ignore the same and keep believing the la la land version of history that you think the British Empire was.

[@williamvorkosigan5151]

@@123rohank Loot is a Hindi word. Languages only create useful words. Words for things that we do. We were new to this looting business, which is why we had to borrow a word from Hindi for doing it. Who were they looting? Did they loot the common man? The common man had nothing. Did they loot the Tipu Sultan? Yes they did and magnificently so. That wealth went to a small minority of people (Wellesley), it did not go to benefit British Citizens any more than Tip Sultan's wealth went to benefit citizens of Mysore. Where did Tipu Sultan get his wealth from? Did his father not invade Hindu Mysore? Did not the Tipu Sultan keep the legitimate Hindu ruler under house arrest? Did we not take Mysore with the support of the majority Hindu's? Did life expectancy increase or decrease under the British? Did average wealth of the people increase or decrease under the British. Did hunger increase or decrease under the British. Before you smugly bring up the Bengal Famine, I suggest you do some reading. If you bring it up, then you demonstrate that you are entirely unreachable. The famine was caused by Indian officials and failure to alleviate it was entirely the cause of the Japanese after significant effort to alleviate it by the British and though them the Australians. Did Sati end under the British? Did the Thuggee Cult get eradicated under the British? Yes indeed, you are incredibly biased. Anita looks pretty pale face to me. I am generations English. She is whiter than me. What has her skin colour got to do with anything? Are you racists? I equally have contempt for the man regardless of his skin colour or pedigree. I simply point out that Indian/Pakistani immigrants do not assimilate, that comment has nothing to do with race. No, I wasn't cautious because I might find out the truth. My desire is to believe as many true things as possible and as few untrue things as possible. This is just a case of British upper middle class hatred of their own nation and past converging with an Indian victimhood representation of the past. If you had any honesty at all, you would know that the next option down the line was for a significant part of the Indian sub continent (in particular the west coast) to become French colonies. There were French with Tipu Sultan. If you now had the command of French rather than English, would that be better for you? Would the French leave in peace as the British did? They didn't in Vietnam. It is you Sir, who are being intellectually dishonest. While having no desire to return to it, the British Empire was empirically the greatest net cause for good the world has ever seen. The Indian Sub Continent was blessed to be a part of it.