William Dalrymple

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas that were exported across the world along a Golden Road stretching from the Red Sea to the Pacific.

Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the globe.

In his new book The Golden Road, historian William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia, sharing stories of the Indian ideas that transformed both the ancient world and our modern societies, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero).

Dalrymple is the bestselling and prizewinning author of books including White Mughals, The Last Mughal and Return of a King. He has written and presented three television series and co-hosts, with Anita Anand, the podcast Empire.