Waris Hussein

Waris Hussein (born 9 December 1938) is a British-Indian television director and film director best known for his many productions for British television, including Doctor Who and the Play of the Month version of A Passage to India (1965). 2Biography Hussein was born in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, British India, into a Saidanpur (Barabanki District) Taluqdar background, and grew up mainly in Bombay. He came to the UK with his family in 1946, when his father, Ali Bahadur Habibullah, was appointed to the Indian High Commission. After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, his father returned to Pakistan, but his mother, Attia Hosain, chose to stay in England with her children, and worked as a writer and as broadcaster on the Indian Section of the BBC's Eastern Service from 1949. He was educated at Clifton College, and then studied English literature at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he directed several plays. His contemporaries included Derek Jacobi, Margaret Drabble, Trevor Nunn, and Ian McKellen, whom he directed in several productions, including a Marlowe Society revival of Caesar and Cleopatra. After graduating in 1960, he joined the BBC to train as a director. He also changed his name from Habibullah to Hussein: "It sounded like the King of Jordan then, but [later] turned out to be more like Saddam – and that doesn't help in life". Hussein directed the first Doctor Who serial, An Unearthly Child, in 1963, although he was unsure about the effect directing televisual science fiction would have on his career: "[I was] a graduate from Cambridge with honours, and you're directing this piece about cavemen in skins [..] 'I thought, 'Where have I landed up in my life?'" In 1964, Hussein returned to the series to direct most of the fourth serial, Marco Polo. He went on to direct many other productions such as a BBC television version of A Passage to India (Play of the Month, 1965); the BBC serial Notorious Woman (1974); the suffragette movement BBC drama Shoulder to Shoulder (1974); and the Thames Television serial Edward and Mrs Simpson (1978