Dilip Hiro wrote an article in New Society about ‘Young Asians in Britain’, and was then asked by Charles Parker to research a BBC radio documentary on the same subject.
Asian Teenager was broadcast in early 1968, shortly before Enoch Powell gave his speech about ‘Rivers of Blood’. Later in 1968, Hiro worked on a TV version of the programme, and then with Philip Donnellan on a film about Wolverhampton called Strangers in a Town.
Dilip Hiro is now a respected author and commentator on South Asia and the Middle East. He is back in Birmingham to reflect on his time in the city and how it helped to shape his script for the first British-Asian feature film, A Private Enterprise (1973).
The conversation will be hosted by Shirin Hirsch (University of Wolverhampton), who has recently helped to curate ‘Many Rivers to Cross’, an exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery marking 50 years since Powell’s speech. This will be preceded by a screening of The Asian Teenagers (Ivor Dunkerton, 1968).
