Lady Kishwar Desai has been awarded and recognised for her work in art, history and literature both in the UK and in India. She is an award winning author, playwright, historian.

 As an author, her sixth book: “The  Longest Kiss: The Life and Times of Devika Rani,” recently received an award from the President of India for the best book on Indian Cinema at the National Film Awards, and is being made into a feature film by a leading studio. Her debut novel ‘Witness the Night” won the Costa Award for the Best first novel in the UK and Ireland.Following that she wrote a trilogy featuring Simran Singh, a social worker turned detective. “Witness the Night” is also under discussion for a feature film, as is her first non fiction book on Indian cinema, “Darlingji” .   

Apart from cinema history, she has been working on colonial history as well and her  book “ Jallianwala Bagh, 1919: The Real Story” won critical acclaim, and led to exhibitions in India, UK and New Zealand at the centenary of the massacre.

 She is the Chair of The Arts And Cultural Heritage Trust that set up the world’s first Partition Museum, at the historic Town Hall, Amritsar, and won seven awards. The Trust  has now set up the second  Partition Museum, at the Dara Shukoh Library in old Delhi. These are people’s museums, created entirely through donations, and contain documents, memorabilia and material from the Partition of India in 1947, which impacted more than 20 million in the world’s largest migration. 

 She also helped to set up the statue of Mahatma Gandhi outside Westminster in the UK. 

 As a playwright,  her play “Devika Rani, Goddess of the Silver Screen” has received standing ovations everywhere that it was staged. Her first play “Manto!” on the life and times of Saadat Hasan Manto won the TAG-Omega award. 

 Before turning author and playwright, Kishwar worked in print journalism and then moved onto television as an anchor/producer for over twenty years. She ran her own production house and even set up and ran a TV channel, and her last full time job was as Vice President, Zee Telefilms. 

 For the past ten years, she has been working on various aspects of colonial history and examining areas which have an impact both in the UK and India. She is at present working on a historical biography, set in the UK and India.