Balachandra Rajan was a scholar of poetry and poetics. He was Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, 1944–8. He was the editor of a series of slim volumes on literary criticism titled Focus which had at least four issues between 1945 and 1948 and was published by Dennis Dobson. The series had its beginnings at Cambridge, where Rajan co-edited (with Wolf Mankowitz) a collection of criticism titled Sheaf which was published by the university, and authored his own collection of poems, Monsoon and Other Poems. While in Britain, he also contributed poems to literary journals, including Life and Letters Today and Poetry London (indeed he was possibly the only South Asian to contribute to the latter, with the exception of its editor, Tambimuttu). Focus appeared to engage critically with work by some of the big literary names of the day, including Huxley, Sartre, Isherwood and Kafka. Contributors of essays include Kathleen Raine, D. S. Savage and Julian Symons, with poems by e. e. cummings, George Barker, John Heath-Stubbs and Vernon Watkins, as well as Rajan himself.

In 1948, Rajan left England for India where he served in the Indian Foreign Service until 1961, working also with UNESCO, UNICEF and as part of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. Later, he returned to academia, initially at the University of Delhi, before taking up a post at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Best known for his work on Milton, Rajan completed a critical book on Paradise Lost as well as an edition (with introduction and commentary) of this canonical work. He also wrote on Spenser, Yeats, Marvell, Eliot, Keats and Macaulay, and completed two novels.

Ramanujan is now recognised to be one of the leading number theorists of the twentieth century, many of whose insights and breakthroughs weren’t fully understood until decades after his death.  Although his time in England was one of great personal loneliness and poor health, his Cambridge years allowed him to build a collaboration with the British mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy that was of fundamental importance for the work of both men.  Hardy said later: ‘I learnt from him much more than he learned from me’. Hardy had invited him to come to England to share his thoughts and speculations on western mathematics, from his post as a clerk in the Madras Port Trust.  There were connections through Hardy to Cambridge luminaries such as Bertrand Russell, and the Apostles (most of the male members of Bloomsbury were Cambridge men, many of whom had been Apostles).

Ramanujan became the second Indian Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918, and the first Indian Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in the same year.

A student at King’s College, London, and Girton College, Cambridge in the early 1890s, and a writer of precocious if imitative verse, Naidu was feted in London in the 1900s as the poet of an exoticized India.

From a Bengali family based in Hyderabad, Naidu was sent to Britain in 1895 on the Nizam's scholarship on the strength of her poetry. She was then not married and known as Sarojini Chattopadhyaya. However, she had already embarked on a romantic relationship with Dr Govindarajalu Naidu, in Hyderabad, who had studied medicine at Edinburgh; her father, Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya had also been a student at Edinburgh University.

She became the ward of Elizabeth Manning, the Secretary of the National Indian Association, whose step-mother had been involved in the foundation of Girton College, Cambridge. Naidu was heavily influenced by the poets Edmund Gosse, Arthur Symons and W. B. Yeats. Particularly interesting accounts of her very early Europeanized work appear as the introductions to her second and third collections, by Arthur Symons, and Edmund Gosse respectively. Her poetry also appeared in the Savoy. Appearances and readings by Naidu in the 1900s were reported in the Indian Magazine.

Naidu returned to India in 1898, beset by ill-health, that dogged her throughout her life. She maintained correspondence with poets in Britain but also embarked on a political career. Her returns to Britain were marked by poetry readings and receptions, convalescence in British nursing homes, as well as political rallies and meetings. She joined the Indian National Congress in 1904 and was vocal about women's rights. She gave evidence in 1919 to a Select Committee in favour of the women's vote in India. She also had a public confrontation with Edwin Montagu over the Amritsar Massacre. Naidu had met M. K. Gandhi in London in 1914 and became very close to him. She accompanied him on the famous Dandi salt march and accompanied him to the Round Table Conference in 1931. Naidu was appointed Governer of United Provinces in 1947 and died in office in February 1949.

Although best known for his behind-the-scenes leadership of the Swadeshi protests against the partition of Bengal (1905-8), the anti-colonialist and Hindu revivalist Ghose was a pioneering Indian poet in English in the 1890s.  After his return to India, he published a collection of lyric poems, Songs to Myrtilla (1895), written while in England, and narrative poems based on Indian legends, Urvasie (1896) and Love and Death (1899).  At the same time he embarked on a sustained critique of the reformist Indian National Congress (INC), carried out in journal articles.

The son of a medical doctor, Ghose was brought to England in 1879 and left by his parents, with his two brothers, to study. He was educated privately at St Paul’s School, and then at King’s College, Cambridge, as a classics scholar. His brother was Manmohan Ghose, an 1890s poet associated with the Rhymers' Club (known for its aestheticism), and friend to English critic Laurence Binyon. Ghose passed the Indian Civil Service examination with Distinction but was unable to take up a position as he failed to appear for the riding test. He returned to India in 1892 whereupon he took up a post at Baroda College.

Back in India, Ghose became involved in Indian politics with his brothers. From around 1902 he had contacts with 'revolutionaries' in Bengal and was involved in a number of bomb plots against the British. Ghose was also a friend to Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble), though this contact was forged in India in the early 1900s. He became editor of Bande Mataram in 1906. In 1910, Ghose left Calcutta for Pondicherry, to flee from prosecution, and became devoted to the practice of yoga. He became a spiritual leader and built up a popular ashram in Pondicherry, retiring from public view around 1926.

C. Jinarajadasa was born of Buddhist parents in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1875. He was 'discovered' by Theosophist C. W. Leadbeater in 1889, who believed that Jinarajadasa was the reincarnation of his recently deceased younger brother, and brought him to England.

Jinarajadasa, known as 'Raja' to friends, graduated in 1900 from St John's College, Cambridge, where he coxed the college eight. He married the English feminist Dorothy Graham in 1916.

Jinarajadasa travelled the world lecturing on behalf of the Theosophical Society. He became President of the Theosophical Society in 1945, resigned in 1952, and died in the USA in 1953.