Distinguished friends
Maria Adebowale-Schwarte
Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia
Rajesh Agrawal
Riz Ahmed
Sughra Ahmed
Keith Ajegbo
George Alagiah
Claire Alexander
Kitty Arie
Julian Baggini
Zelda Baveystock
Haidee Bell
Richard Beswick
Dinesh Bhugra
Karan Bilimoria
Geoffrey Bindman
Karen Blackett
Nicholas Blake
Ian Blatchford
David Blunkett
Hina Bokhari
Mihir Bose
Alain de Botton
John Bowers
Stephen Briganti
Des Browne
Mukti Jain Campion
Paul Canoville
Gus Casely-Hayford
Michael Cashman
Saimo Chahal
Reeta Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti
Stephen Claypole
Robin Cohen
Linda Colley
David Crystal
Angélica Dass
Prakash Daswani
Sandie Dawe
Navnit Dholakia
Sherry Dobbin
Ibrahim Dogus
Lloyd Dorfman
Alf Dubs
John Dyson
Damien Egan
Graeme Farrow
Shreela Flather
Daniel Franklin
Edie Friedman
Manjit Singh Gill
Teresa Graham
Ann Grant
Susie Harries
Naomie Harris
James Hathaway
David Hencke
Sophie Herxheimer
Afua Hirsch
Michael Howard
Clive Jacobs
Kevin Jennings
Adrian Johns
Shobu Kapoor
Jackie Kay
Ayub Khan-Din
Francesca Klug
Tony Kushner
Kwasi Kwarteng
Kwame Kwei-Armah
David Kynaston
Brian Lambkin
Mark Lewisohn
Joanna Lumley
Michael Mansfield
Sue McAlpine
Neil Mendoza
Nick Merriman
David Miles
Abigail Morris
Hugh Muir
Tessa Murdoch
Sandy Nairne
Bushra Nasir
Susheila Nasta
Eithne Nightingale
John O’Farrell
Kenneth Olisa
Kunle Olulode
David Olusoga
Julia Onslow-Cole
John Orna-Ornstein
Herman Ouseley
Sameer Pabari
Ruth Padel
Panikos Panayi
Bhikhu Parekh
Nikesh Patel
David Pearl
Caryl Phillips
Mike Phillips
Trevor Phillips
Sunand Prasad
Kavita Puri
Trevor Robinson
Aubrey Rose
Michael Rosen
Cathy Ross
Salman Rushdie
Jill Rutter
Philippe Sands
Sathnam Sanghera
Konrad Schiemann
Richard Scott
Stephen Sedley
Maggie Semple
Saira Shah
Babita Sharma
Nikesh Shukla
Jon Snow
Sonia Solicari
Robert Soning
David Spence
Danny Sriskandarajah
Stelio Stefanou
Dick Taverne
Jane Thompson
Robert Tombs
Rumi Verjee
Patrick Vernon
Edmund de Waal
Iqbal Wahhab
Yasmin Waljee
David Warren
Iain Watson
Henning Wehn
Nat Wei
Janet Whitaker
Gary Younge
Benjamin Zephaniah
Saira Shah
Saira Shah is an award-winning documentary film maker and writer, whose work has drawn attention to the plight of women and children in her ancestral homeland of Afghanistan, as well as to voiceless minorities the world over.
Saira Shah was born in London and raised in Kent, England. She read Arabic and Persian at the School of Oriental and African Studies, graduating in 1986. Her father was the late Idries Shah, an Afghan (though half-Scottish) writer of books on Sufism; her mother is half-Parsee and half-English.
She first visited Afghanistan in the 1980s and there became a freelance journalist covering the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation. She has also worked as a journalist for Channel 4 News, which she left in 2001. She has regularly travelled to hot spots like the Balkans, Algiers, Palestine, Congo, Iraq, Columbia, Northern Ireland and Sudan. Shah worked with her great friend, the late James Miller, on several projects including the films Beneath the Veil (2001), a portrait of Afghanistan under the Taliban; its sequel, Unholy War (2001), which won numerous awards; and Death in Gaza (2004), for which she was awarded a Current Affairs BAFTA.
Saira Shah has published a memoir, The Storyteller’s Daughter, an account of her search for cultural identity. In an interview she said, ‘Two people live inside me. Like a couple who rarely speak, they are not compatible. My Western side is a sensitive, liberal, middle-class pacifist. My Afghan side I can only describe as a rapacious robber baron. It revels in bloodshed, glories in risk and will not be afraid.’ She goes on to explain, ‘I think it was really important to my father that we didn’t grow up feeling we didn’t belong anywhere. He wanted us to have a metaphorical homeland, so he created a community out of stories. The only thing that surprises me was how amazed and horrified he was when I turned around at 21 and said, “Well I’m going there, if that’s where I come from”.’ In 2013 she published the semi-autobiographical novel The Mouse-Proof Kitchen.