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Join award-winning historian William Dalrymple alongside exhibition curators Dr Xavier Bray and Davinder Toor, as they discuss the fascinating lives of the Firangis - the Westerners who were employed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Enlisting East India Company deserters, ex-Napoleonic generals, mercenaries and medical men from across Europe and as far away as the United States of America, Ranjit Singh placed them into key positions including military commanders, governors and advisers. Hear how these multifarious soldier-adventurers were enticed by the chance to make their fortunes and to escape their previous circumstances.

About the speakers: Dr Xavier Bray is Director of the Wallace Collection and co-curator of the exhibition Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King. 

William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapuściński award-winning Return of a King. His most recent book, The Anarchy, was long-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2019, and shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, the Tata Book of the Year (Non-fiction) and the Historical Writers Association Book Award 2020. A frequent broadcaster, William presents the popular Empire podcast with Anita Anand. He has written and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA. He has also won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, The Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and the Guardian, and is currently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

Davinder Toor is co-curator of the exhibition Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King. He is a leading figure among a new generation of Sikh, Indian and Islamic art collectors. He has acted as a consultant to major private collectors, auction houses and institutions such as the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wallace Collection. He currently lectures on the 'Arts of the Royal Sikh Courts' and 'Sikh Painting and Manuscripts' for the Victoria and Albert Museum’s prestigious 'Arts of Asia' course. Both he and objects from the Toor Collection of Sikh Art were featured on the BBC’s ‘Lost Treasures of the Sikh Kingdom’ (2014) and ‘The Stolen Maharajah: Britain's Indian Royal' (2018) documentaries. The Toor Collection, comprising in excess of 1500 works, acts as a lasting legacy to the empire of the Sikhs.

Take part at the museum: Join us at the museum for this talk, followed by refreshments and entry to the exhibition Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King until 20.45.

Watch online: This talk will also be broadcast live from the museum. Online ticketholders will be emailed a link to join 24 hours in advance. Ticketholders will also receive a link to view a recording of the talk, which will be available for two weeks.