“When Jaffrey arrived in Britain, non-white actors were still a rarity and the theatre world was at a loss as to how to deal with them. Slowly his quality became recognised, even though the stage parts he was offered often depended on his ethnicity rather than his considerable professional abilities. Colour-blind casting was still in its infancy, and it is not surprising that much of Jaffrey’s early British work was in the BBC World Service, where his splendid speaking voice and his pure Urdu were invaluable.”