[11] Dalrymple was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to literature and the arts.

[20] One of his sons, Sam Dalrymple, is a historian and a cofounder of a peace initiative called Project Dastaan.

[23] A catalogue of this exhibit co-edited by Dalrymple with Yuthika Sharma was published by Yale University Press, then later in India by Penguin, in 2012 under the same name.

[25] Dalrymple's interests include the history and art of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Jains and early Eastern Christianity.

His early influences included travel writers such as Robert Byron,[26] Eric Newby, and Bruce Chatwin.

He attended the inaugural Palestine Festival of Literature in 2008, giving readings and taking workshops in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem.

[32] After its publication he toured the UK, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, Holland and the US with a band consisting of some of the people featured in his book including Sufis, Fakirs, Bauls, Tevaram hymn singers as well as a prison warder and part-time Theyyam dancer widely believed to incarnate the god Vishnu.

[33] Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, a history of the First Afghan War 1839–42, was published in India in December 2012,[24] in the UK in February 2013, and in the US in April 2013.

It was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Bronze Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations.

[36] As of 2020, he was writing a book that is "a sweeping look at India’s ideological colonisation of Asia, China and Europe during the short period between 250 BC to about 800 AD.

"[37] This book was published in September 2024 and is titled The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World.

The trilogy of Indian Journeys consists of three one-hour episodes starting with Shiva’s Matted Locks which, while tracing the source of the Ganga, takes Dalrymple on a journey to the Himalayas; the second part, City of Djinns, is based on his travel book of the same name, and takes a look at Delhi's history; lastly, Doubting Thomas takes Dalrymple to the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, with which St Thomas, the Apostle of Jesus is closely associated.