Orage held a central position in early twentieth-century cultural circles in Britain, particularly as editor of the influential New Age weekly journal. Initially trained as a teacher and working for the Leeds School Board, Orage became increasingly interested in socialist politics; a particularly lively sphere of activity in the industrial town of Leeds. In 1900, he met Holbrook Jackson and they founded the Leeds Art Club together. Its programme of talks, debates and events, encompassing a broad range of topics including Plato, Nietzsche, Theosophy and Fabian Socialism, reflects Orage’s and Jackson’s personal interests at this time. In 1906, he moved to London to pursue a career in journalism.

Supported by George Bernard Shaw, Orage and Holbrook Jackson bought and edited the New Age with Orage becoming the sole editor in 1909. India and the ‘East’ more generally loomed large in Orage’s imagination, although he never actually visited there. Under his editorship, the New Age also published articles and letters about South Asian culture and politics. Ananda Coomaraswamy contributed four articles to the journal and a number of letters to the editor. Orage responded to Coomaraswamy’s 1915 piece ‘The Hindu View of Art’ by saying: ‘In such treatises it is usual to find more sound than sense, more learning than wisdom, more chaff, than wheat; but in Dr. Coomaraswamy’s hands the subject becomes substantial and intelligible.’ Orage visited Coomaraswamy in Boston where the later was a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The New Age also contained contributions on Indian art by E. B. Havell and carried notices of the India Society. Its art critic, Huntly Carter, referred to Indian art and the India Society in his articles before the First World War.

After the war, Orage became increasingly interested in the economic theory of social credit. His interest in mysticism and the occult also deepened through his associations with the Serbian mystic Dimiti Mitrinovi and the occultist P. D. Ouspensky. He became a disciple of the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff. In October 1922 Orage left his editorial position at the New Age, and spent a year at Gurdjieff's institute, Le Prieuré, at Fontainebleau. He then spent a considerable amount of time in America lecturing and writing about philosophy and religion where he married Jessie Dwight (after a divorce from his first wife, Jean) who was co-owner of the Sunwise Turn Bookshop in New York which published Ananda Coomaraswamy’s work. Orage returned to England in 1930, setting up the New English Weekly in 1932, and again becoming the editor of a journal championing avant-garde writing, thought, art and political theory. He died suddenly in 1934 and was buried in Hampstead under a gravestone carved by Eric Gill, a sculptor with whom he had had a long association.

C. E. M. Joad was an English philosopher and popular educator. He was educated at Oxford and, after serving as a civil servant, was appointed Head of Philosophy at Birkbeck College (University of London) in 1930. A prolific writer and conservationist, he shot to fame as a broadcasting star when he joined the BBC radio programme ‘The Brain Trust’ in 1942. He was convicted of fare-dodging and was sacked by the BBC in 1948.

As an undergraduate at Oxford, Joad became an admirer of George Bernard Shaw; he turned to socialism and was a committed pacifist throughout his life. He was a member of the Fabian Society but was expelled in 1925 due to his philandering (he rejoined in 1943). In 1931, he became Director of Propaganda for the New Party, but soon left the party along with John Strachey when its leader Oswald Mosley turned to fascism. In 1932 he founded with H. G. Wells and others the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals.

Joad looked to eastern philosophy as an antidote to western modernity. He attended a number of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s lectures and wrote on his philosophy (Counter Attack from the East, 1933). He also wrote a book on Indian civilization (1936) assisted by Girija Mookerjee, and was a regular contributor to the Anglo-Indian Theosophist periodical Aryan Path. Joad was an admirer of Gandhi, and contributed to a collection of essays (edited by S. Radhakrishnan) on Gandhi to celebrate his 70th birthday.

Mulk Raj Anand, in Conversations in Bloomsbury, records a long talk he had with Joad about God and philosophy. Anand and Joad both attended Professor Dawes Hicks’s seminar at University College London, and it appears that this is how they got to know each other. Joad also met through Anand his fellow student Nikhil Sen and his girlfriend Edna Thomson.

MacCarthy was a talented violinist who had trained at the Royal College of Music and toured with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. From an early age, MacCarthy claimed to experience mystical visions and she maintained an interest in esoteric spirituality throughout her life. In 1905, she accompanied the soon-to-be president of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant, on a visit to India where MacCarthy was deeply influenced not only by the religious practices of South Asia, but also its music.

This is an interest she further developed with her second husband, the composer John Foulds, whom she married in 1915. They collaborated on his World Requiem and MacCarthy wrote and spoke about Indian music in the UK. She also had an interest in the visual arts and was a founder member of the Theosophical Arts Circle (1907-14) and wrote for their journal, Orpheus. Foulds and MacCarthy met a young man, referred to only as 'The Boy' in her writings, who was employed in a gas works in the East End of London. According to MacCarthy, 'The Boy' possessed great spiritual powers and could channel an initiated spiritual group known as 'The Brothers'. In 1935, MacCarthy, Foulds and 'The Boy' moved to India where they established an ashram to promulgate these spiritual teachings. After Foulds death, MacCarthy took the name Swami Omananda Puri.

Alice Richardson met Ananda Coomaraswamy around 1910, most probably at a recital of folk songs given by pupils of the collector of folk songs and cultural revivalist, Cecil Sharp. Richardson accompanied Coomaraswamy on a trip to India in 1911 and became his second wife. They lived on a houseboat in Srinagar, Kashmir, whilst she studied Indian music with Abdul Rahim of Kapurthala, and Coomaraswamy researched Rajput painting of northern India.

Once back in London, Alice Coomaraswamy became noted for her recitals of Indian music which were often introduced by an explanatory lecture given by her husband. She performed widely in the UK (including at the Theosophical Society Summer Schools) under the name Ratan Devi and in Indian dress. When the Coomaraswamys first went to the US, it was for her concert tour. Alice had two children (a boy, Narada, and a girl, Rohini) by Coomaraswamy before their divorce and his subsequent marriage to the American dancer and artist, Stella Bloch.

A chance reading of the Upanishads in the mid 1880s, and a friendship with Charles Johnston from 1885, led Russell to a study of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Russell was drawn into Theosophical circles through Johnston and W. B. Yeats. In 1885, he met Mohini Chatterjee in Dublin and was greatly impressed by him. This acquaintance encouraged Russell to pursue his study of Indian philosophy and literature further. In 1890, Russell gave up Art School, formally joined the Theosophical Society and dedicated the next seven years to pursuing 'the path of mysticism'. Russell spent a lot of time in meditation and became interested in yoga. Hindu and Buddhist philosophy became an influence on his poetry and artistic works, although he was also inspired by visions and his 'natural mysticism'.

Russell was known for his thorough knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita and this led to interactions with South Asian visitors to the UK, as did his friendship with Yeats. When Purohit Swami arrived in the UK in 1930, he came bearing a letter of introduction to Russell written by E. E. Speight. In Yeats's introduction to the translation of The Ten Principal Upanishads by Yeats and Purohit Swami (1937), he drew attention to the influence of Russell on him. Yeats told how Russell had been quoting the Upanishads for the 'last forty years'. Russell also had connections with Rabindranath Tagore and Ranjee G. Shahani. Shahani remarks in a letter to Tagore in 1934 that AE had often spoken of Tagore to him. In 1931, Russell was invited to meet Mahatma Gandhi in London, whose theory of non-violence had been advocated by Russell in The Interpreters, but was unable to meet him as his wife fell ill.

George Arundale was a Theosophist. He was tutored by Charles Leadbeater and went to St John's College, Cambridge in 1895. In 1902, he moved to Benares and became principal of the Central Hindu College. Arundale became involved with the All-India Home Rule League and was imprisoned, with Annie Besant, in 1917, under the Defence of India Act, 1917.

In 1920, he married a Brahmin girl, Rukmini Devi, which caused some controversy in India. In 1926, he became Regionary Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church in India. In 1934, he became President of the Theosophical Society. He edited the Theosophist. He died in 1945 in Adyar at the Theosophist headquarters.

H. P. Blavatsky was the founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875.

Charles W. Leadbeater was a former Anglican clergyman and a prominent member of the Theosophical Society, which he joined in 1883. In 1889, during his travels to India, he found Currupumullage Jinarajadasa, who he believed to be the reincarnation of his deceased younger brother. Leadbeater brought Jinarajadasa to England where he tutored him before Jinarajadasa gained admission into the University of Cambridge.

In 1910, Leadbeater 'discovered' Jiddu Krishnamurti in Adyar. Leadbeater believed that Krishnamurti was the reincarnation of the World Teacher/Messiah and drew him to the attention of Annie Besant, who took Krishnamurti and his brother under her wing. Before this, in 1906, Leadbeater had been charged with 'perversion' against young boys and had resigned from the Theosophical Society. The charges were never proved and when Annie Besant became President of the Society in 1907, she reinstated Leadbeater. Krishnamurti's father underwent a protracted custody battle against Besant and Leadbeater over the two boys, but eventually the Theosophists were able to assume total guardianship over the boys.

Leadbeater can be described as an observant traveller on the astral plane and wrote many books recounting his experiences. He and Besant collaborated to produce Occult Chemistry in which they used clairvoyance to examine atoms.