Dalrymple shines at Kasauli Lit Fest

Day 2 of the Kasauli Literary Festival was dominated by William Dalrymple as he held the audience spellbound with his talk on his most recent book The Return of a King.

A few minutes late as he was caught in the Kasauli traffic, Dalrymple got off his car and rushed into the Kasauli club and immediately began his talk which lasted half an hour.The Scot spoke with characteristic natural ease, knowledge and humour.
On day 2 the festival venue was totally packed so that for the indoor sessions many did not find a seat and listened standing outside.

Another notable session was outdoors while the sun was setting down the valley. A big crowd listened to Farooq Abdullah Wajahat Habibullah and A S Dulat speak on Kashmir.

Farooq spoke like he always does full of rhetoric and exclamations.

His best quote was, “Nehru was a ladies man and Lady Mountbatten prevailed on him.”

A R Dulat the former RAW chief gave a better quote, “I would love to be the ISI chief as this is the most powerful intelligence chief in the world.”