Unpopularity

Shortly before Bill Gates’s seventh birthday in 1962, his parents stuffed their son into a button-down shirt and blazer for a visit to Century 21, a bold showcase of scientific prowess in their home town of Seattle. This futuristic fair was intended as the nation’s rebuff to Soviet Russia following the Sputnik satellite launch, which sparked the space race. The family enjoyed the new 600ft Space Needle. They also saw the Mercury capsule that carried the first American into space; Ford’s concept of a six-wheeled nuclear-powered car; and IBM’s idea of a cheap computer, costing $100,000. Best of all in the boy’s view was rattling around on the Wild Mouse Ride, which felt risky and thrilling, stoking a lifelong love of rollercoasters.

The mantelpieces of many an Asian family in Leicester and London, it is said, sport two framed photographs. One is of Idi Amin, the African dictator who expelled them from Uganda; the other is of Edward Heath, the prime minister who allowed them in. ‘This double gratitude,’ writes Lucy Fulford, ‘says thanks for throwing us out and thanks for taking us in.’ Asians filled teddy bears with jewellery and baked diamonds into snacks taken aboard their last flights out If the expulsion from ‘the Pearl of Africa’ of 80,000 Asians was the most traumatic experience of their lives, many also retro-actively recognise it as the best thing that ever happened.