Sam Dalrymple is a Delhi-raised Scottish historian and award-winning film-maker. He graduated from Oxford University as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar, and also studied at the University of Isfahan and Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran. He has worked across South and Central Asia, including stints with Turquoise Mountain in Kabul, and with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Hunza and Lahore.
In 2018, he co-founded Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the 1947 Partition of India. His debut film, Child of Empire, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, and his animated series, Lost Migrations, sold out at the British Film Institute the same year. His writing has appeared in the New York Times and The Spectator, and his work has been featured in TIME, The New Yorker and The Economist. He is a columnist for Architectural Digest, and in 2025, Travel & Leisure named him ‘Champion of the Travel Narrative’. He runs the history Substack page @travelsofsamwise. Shattered Lands is his first book.