Dilip Hiro was born in the Indian subcontinent, and educated in India, Britain and the United States, where he received a Master’s degree. He then settled in Britain in the mid-1960s, and became a full-time writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has published 30 books and contributed to 16 more.
He has written extensively for stage, television and cinema. To Anchor a Cloud, his three-act stage play about the struggle for power by Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan, and the concept of the Taj Mahal, was produced in London in 1970, starring Saeed Jaffrey, Jamila Massey and Mrac Zuber. It was published in 1987 as part of Three Plays. The other plays in the collection wereApply, Apply, No Reply, written originally for BBC TV and broadcast in 1976, and A Clean Break, a one-act play performed in 1978. He scripted 10 of the 21 episodes on the BBC TV’s drama serial Parosi, centered round the lives of South Asian immigrants in Britain, broadcast in 1978-79 and repeated a year later. He is the co-script writer of A Private Enterprise, a story of a young Indian immigrant in Britain trying to become a successful businessman, which was judged the best British film of 1974, and won prize at the Chicago Film Festival. .In 1985 he wrote The Video Wicked, a stage play for the Royal Cur Theatre, London, for young audience. The Asian Cooperative Theatre, London, presented a staged reading of his three-act play, In Search of Lord Clive’s Corpse in 1993.
