Mihir Bose

He has written more than fifty books on sport, including football and cricket, and history, such as Bollywood, India and the extraordinary WW2 quintuple agent Silver. The subjects of his many biographies include
Michael Grade, Terry Venables, Moeen Ali and the Indian nationalist Subhas Bose (no relation).

Mihir was the BBC’s first sports editor and first non-white editor. He was chief sports news correspondent at the Daily Telegraph and worked for the Sunday Times for 20 years.

His honorary doctorate from Loughborough University was awarded for his outstanding contribution to journalism and the promotion of equality. Mihir is a member of the English Heritage Blue Plaques Panel and former chairman of the Reform Club. He and his wife Caroline live in London. He has a daughter, Indira.

Acknowledge not Apologise
Our past is coming under increasing scrutiny with much attention being given to our imperial history and such issues as slavery. Mihir was born just months before India won freedom, is proud of being a free India, but heard from his parents and relations what it was like living under British rule in India. He will talk about how we need to look at the past dispassionately and be prepared to acknowledge what happened even if such incidents reflect very badly on our ancestors. But this acknowledgement of dark deeds does not mean we have to apologise for what our ancestors did. What we must do is not cherry pick events from the past so as to whitewash uncomfortable truths. We must learn from the past so we can move forward to create a better future.

How Britain has become a more caring, diverse, society.
Mihir arrived in this country seven months after Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood speech. He faced racism which included landladies telling him they could not rent him a room because he was Indian, white women saying they could not go out with him because they wanted white babies. He was assaulted by a skinhead in a London tube, chased down the train by a football fan shouting “Coon, coon, hit the coon over the head with a baseball bat”, and saved from a bad beating by Chelsea fans by the police. Yet he has also seen doors open which has enabled him to fulfil his dream of becoming a writer. He will talk of the lessons his experiences hold as we try to create a more diverse, welcoming society.

How Sport more than Arts and Culture is bringing people together.
Mihir has been covering sport in this country since 1974 and seen how the sports world has dramatically changed. There has been nothing short of a revolution. Money has come into sports in an unimaginable way in 1974. Also, a sports world, which for decades tolerated racists and racism is now both aware of this evil and willing to tackle it. In doing so sport has shown it can bring people from diverse cultures and races together more successfully than any other activity. This is because sport is rule based which means it can spread across cultures and races. In contrast, arts and music reflect a particular culture. Western music is totally different to Indian or Chinese music. Yet Indians now control cricket, this very English game, because the colossal economic power of Indian cricket means it provides 85% of world cricket’s income.