Waris Hussein | |
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Born |
Waris Habibullah 9 December 1938 Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, British India |
Education | Clifton College |
Alma mater | Queens' College, Cambridge |
Occupation | Television and film director |
Years active | 1960–present |
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 A Passage to India.
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: