William Dalrymple with Fergal Keane: Rapacity and Excess in Imperial India

In the hands of William Dalrymple, history becomes a rip-roaring, rollicking adventure; the reader embarking on a visceral odyssey into the subject thanks to Dalrymple’s glorious gift for storytelling and his eye for detail.

In The Anarchy, the Delhi-based writer has turned his hand to a study of corporate greed in Imperial India, with the rise to prominence of the East India Company. This, according to Dalrymple, was aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business. Within the space of four decades the East India Company had assembled a security force of more than 200,000 people – twice the size of the British army – and had subdued an entire continent.

In this event the celebrated Scottish writer talks to BBC special correspondent Fergal Keane about India’s turbulent history under imperial rule.

This is a pre-recorded event.