How ancient India transformed the world

Join historian William Dalrymple (pictured above) as he shares the rarely told story of India’s role as a cultural and scientific superpower of the ancient world when he appears at The Apex, in Bury St Edmunds, next month.

One of Britain’s greatest living historians, Dalrymple is known across the globe for his ability to bring the extraordinary history of the Indian subcontinent to life, whether through award-winning, bestselling books like “Return of a King” and “The Anarchy”, or his hit podcast, “Empire”.

Live on stage, he’ll tell the story of how, from 250BC to 1200AD, India transformed the world: exporting religion, art, science, medicine, and language along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific, creating a vast and important empire of ideas.

Like ancient Greece, ancient India came up with a set of profound answers to the big questions about what the world is, how it operates, why we are here and how we should live our lives.

Out of India came holy men, monks and missionaries as well as pioneering merchants and artists, astronomers, healers, and scientists.

Indian ideas crossed political borders and influenced everything they touched, from the statues in Roman seaports to the Buddhism of Japan, the poetry of China to the mathematics of Baghdad.

An expert in the history of the Indian subcontinent, William Dalrymple wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller “In Xanadu” when he was 22.

Every one of his books has won literary prizes. His work also includes “White Mughals”, “The Last Mughal”, “Nine Lives: in Search of the Sacred in Modern India” and “City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi”.

William Dalrymple is at The Apex on Wednesday, September 4, at 7.30pm.  See www.theapex.co.uk or ring 01284 758000 for tickets or visit The Apex box office in Charter Square, Bury St Edmunds.