It is Dalrymple's fifth major book, and tells the true story of a love affair that took place in early nineteenth century Hyderabad between James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa Begum.

It documents the inter-ethnic liaisons between British officers, such as Charles "Hindoo" Stuart, and Indian women, and the geopolitical context of late 18th century India.

The very title of White Mughals indicates its subject: the late 18th- and early 19th-century period in India, where there had been ‘a succession of unexpected and unplanned minglings of peoples and cultures and ideas’.

On one level, the book tells the tragic love story of James Kirkpatrick, ‘the thoroughly orientalised’ British Resident in Hyderabad and Khair, a beautiful young Muslim noblewoman.

The daughter Kitty becomes a friend and muse of Scottish writer and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, and re-establishes contact with her grandmother in India through Henry Russell.