Frank Moraes was born in Bombay in 1907, the son of a Catholic Goan civil engineer. From 1927 to 1934 he read history at Oxford University as a member of St Catherine's Society. He was active in student politics and was elected President of the Oxford Majlis and London Indian Majlis (Indian Students' Association) and of the Indian Students' Union in England. Moraes was affected by events such as the General Strike and the economic depression of the late 1920s. He was the editor of an Oxford student newspaper, Bharat. Later he studied law at Lincoln's Inn, London, and was called to the Bar.

He returned to India in 1934 and practised as a barrister for a few months. Bored with his profession, he wrote several articles for a subsidiary newspaper of The Times of India. In 1936 he joined the staff of The Times of India as a journalist and in 1938 he was promoted to junior assistant editor. From 1942 to 1945 he toured Burma and China as the newspaper's war correspondent.

Moraes married in 1937. He and his wife Beryl had a son Francis (Dom), who became a well-known poet in the 1960s. During the 1940s Beryl Moraes became ill and was confined thereafter to mental institutions. From 1946 to 1949 Francis Moraes lived in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and worked as editor of The Times Ceylon and The Morning Standard. He also served as Indian correspondent for several British newspapers. In 1950 he returned to The Times of India and became its first Indian editor. In 1957 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Goenka family newspaper, the Indian Express (formerly the Morning Standard). He also wrote articles for various newspapers outside India. Occasionally he broadcast for the BBC and Radio Australia. In December 1972 he retired from the Indian Express. He settled in London in 1973 and died the following year. 

M. C. Chagla was born in Bombay in 1900. As a young boy he read Morley's Life of Gladstone and had the ambition to go to Oxford and join Christ Church college as Gladstone had done. In 1919, when Chagla went to Britain, he did not gain admission to Christ Church college, but did at Lincoln College. Here, Chagla read Modern History, with the intention to foster a public career.

Chagla had a very active social life as a student. He joined the Oxford Union and was elected to the Library Committee in 1921. He was a member of the Oxford Liberal Club, the Oxford Labour Club and Lotus Club. He was an active member of the Oxford Majlis and was elected President in June 1921. Chagla was also heavily involved with the Annual Indian Social Conference, that had begun in 1917 and would meet each year in Derbyshire for lectures, debates, games, and excursions.

Whilst studying at Oxford, Chagla also studied for the Bar as a member of Inner Temple. Having earnt a second class degree, and having been called to the Bar, Chagla returned to India in 1922. He joined the Bombay Bar where Jinnah was practising and joined the Muslim League soon after. However, Chagla broke off from the Muslim League when Jinnah began to espouse the two-nation theory. Chagla practised at the Bar from 1922 to 1941 and also taught law at Government College, Bombay. On Indian independence (15 August 1947), Chagla was appointed Chief Justice of Bombay. In 1958, Nehru appointed Chagla as Ambassador to the United States, and then High Commissioner in London in 1961. Chagla was Education Minister and then Minister of External Affairs in India, 1963-7.

D. F. Karaka was born in Bombay in 1911. He is the grandson of Dosabhai Framji Karaka, whose History of the Parsis became the authoritative text on the Parsee community in the late nineteenth century. Karaka arrived in England in the autumn of 1930 and joined Lincoln College at the University of Oxford to study law. Karaka became an active member of the Oxford Union, participating in debates. He would occupy a number of posts - Treasurer, Secretary and Librarian - before being elected the first President of South Asian origin of the Oxford Union. He succeeded Michael Foot, who was a close friend of his. 

Karaka was Secretary of the Union when it held its controversial ‘King and Country’ debate (9 February 1933). The Union discussed the pacifist motion ‘that this House will under no circumstances fight for its King or Country’. The controversy provoked heated debate in the national press and among Oxford students. At a subsequent meeting of the Union, Karaka’s minutes were torn from him and destroyed. He also received protection from the university police for a limited amount of time. During his time at Oxford, Karaka started writing non-fiction, especially about his experience as an Indian in Britain and his position as a 'coloured' man. After Karaka finished his degree, he sat the examination for the Indian Civil Service. He failed but went on to pass his Bar examination in London. In order to earn some money, he briefly worked at the clothes store Simpson's on Piccadilly, advertising the store to newly-arrived Indian students in Britain. Against his parents wishes, he decided to pursue a career in journalism. He published an article on the colour bar in 1934 in the Daily Herald, one of the most widely read newspapers in the 1930s. He also wrote several non-fiction books that dealt with the colour bar and the position of Indians in the British empire and Britain, most notably The Pulse of Oxford, I Go West and Oh! You English. Some of his journalism of the period is collected in All My Yesterdays.

He returned to Bombay in 1938 where he worked as a journalist for the Bombay Chronicle, later being promoted to its editorial board. During the Second World War, he worked as a war correspondent. Initially he was posted to Chungking, covering the Chinese war against the Japanese, before becoming effectively an embedded journalist with the 14th Army in Burma in the run-up to the battles of Kohima and Imphal. He transferred to the Western Theatre of War in early 1945, covering the advances of British, American and Indian Forces in Italy. After a short time in London, where he was able to reconnect with friends such as Michael Foot from his Oxford days, as well as gain an exclusive interview with Lord Amery, Secretary of State for India, he was accredited to Southern Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force to witness the Allied Forces’ final push through France and the Low Countries into Germany. He was one of the first journalists to reach Bergen Belsen concentration camp. He was also among the journalists who travelled to Rheims to witness Germany surrender on 8 May 1945.

After the end of the war in Western Europe and his return to England, Karaka wanted to move via New York to the Pacific to cover the war there. However, he did not make it to the Pacific theatre in time. At the end of 1945, Karaka returned to India. After falling out with the editor of the Bombay Chronicle, he founded his own weekly newspaper, The Current. Karaka supported Indian independence and the Indian National Congress, while also supporting the British war effort. He was witness to partition violence, covering for his newspaper the displacement of 10 million people and the atrocities that accompanied it. After independence he became increasingly critical and sceptical of Nehru’s policies. He wrote critically about corruption, and Nehru’s ‘autocratic’ style of government, which led to his phone conversations being tapped and the monitoring of his movements. In 1971, with heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, he was imprisoned briefly on grounds of national security. D. F. Karaka died in 1974 from a heart attack.

K. P. S. Menon joined Oxford after the end of the First World War. He was President of the Oxford Majlis for a term in 1920. 

Menon served in the Madras ICS until 1924 when he was transferred to the Foreign and Political Department as Under-Secretary to the Resident of Hyderabad. In 1939, he was appointed as Chief Minister of Bharatpur, then Ambassador to China after independence, Foreign Secretary from 1948 to 1952 and then Ambassador to Moscow.

N. B. Bonarjee was born in 1901 in Lucknow. His grandfather had converted to Christianity in 1847, and his father had travelled to London in 1885 to compete unsuccessfully for the Indian Civil Service. In 1904, Bonarjee's family went to England. His father entered Lincoln's Inn and his mother became honorary secretary of the Indian Women's Education Association in London. In 1910, Bonarjee joined Dulwich Prepatory School and his parents returned to India leaving their children in the care of guardians. His elder brother and sister attended the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, but Bonarjee joined Hertford College, Oxford in 1919. He was a member of the college Rugby XV and took up ballroom dancing. He obtained his history degree in 1922 and then became a temporary schoolmaster at Dulwich for a year.

In 1924, he took the ICS exams and returned to India in 1924 (after twenty years in England) as an ICS man. He was initially posted in U.P. and rose through the ranks to become District Magistrate in Meerut in the 1940s. He took up a number of key government posts and was Chief Minister of UP at Indian independence. After independence, he was Chief Commissioner of Bhopal, the last of the princely states, for a year.

In his autobiography, Under Two Masters, published in 1970, Bonarjee talks about the prejudices he faced as a child, and his experiences upon returning to India after so many years in Britain.

Janaki Agnes Penelope Majumdar was the daughter of the Hemangini and W. C. Bonnerjee, the first president of the Indian National Congress in December 1885. Born in Calcutta, in June 1886, Janaki, her mother and siblings settled in England from 1888. They soon moved into a house they named 'Kidderpore' in Croydon. Janaki spent 1893-5 back in India and then returned to England and went to Croydon High School for Girls.

She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1904, and was the first Indian woman to receive a degree in Natural Sciences. Following the death of her father in 1906, 'Kidderpore' was sold. Janaki began a teacher's training course at the London Day Training College in 1907 and did voluntary work at the Charity Organization Society's Newington Branch. In 1908, she returned to Calcutta with her mother and met P. K. Majumdar. He had studied at Birmingham University and trained as a barrister in London. They were married in 1909 and lived in Calcutta. She returned to London following her husband's death in 1947.

In 1935, Janaki wrote a family memoir about her childhood, her father and her husband, with a major emphasis on her mother, Hemangini. It tells of a South Asian family living in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This memoir, Family History, was edited by Antoinette Burton and published in 2003.

Madan Lal Dhingra was the sixth of seven children of a civil surgeon. All six sons studied abroad. In June 1906, Dhingra left Amritsar for Britain. He enrolled in University College, London, to study engineering.

Dhingra arrived in London a year after the foundation of Shyamaji Krishnavarma's India House. This organization in Highgate was a meeting place for Indian radicals. They had weekly meetings, which Dhingra would often attend. V. D. Savarkar became manager of India House and inspired Dhingra's admiration in the cult of assassination. However, Dhingra became aloof from India House and was known to undertake shooting practice at a range on Tottenham Court Road. On 1 July 1909, he attended an 'At Home' hosted by the National Indian Association at the Imperial Institute. At the end of the event, as the guests were leaving, Dhingra shot Sir Curzon-Wyllie, an India Office official, at close range. His bullets also hit Dr Lalcaca, a Parsee doctor, who was killed.

Dhingra was immediately arrested. At his trial, Dhingra represented himself, although he did not recognize the legitimacy of the court. He claimed that he had murdered Curzon-Wyllie as a patriotic act and in revenge for the inhumane killings of Indians by the British Government in India. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed at Pentonville Prison on 17 August 1909.

P.N. Haksar arrived in Britain to study at the London School of Economics. He was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn in the early 1940s. In London, he was an active member of Krishna Menon's India League along with other students, which greatly shaped his socialist political outlook. He  befriended Feroze Gandhi and Jawahrlal Nehru's daughter Indira who would later appoint him her principal secretary, a post he held from 1967-73. He was also India's chief negotiator for the talks between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1972-3.

Jahangir Khan was a cricketer who played for India and, after independence, for Pakistan. He was selected for India's first test match tour of England in 1932. After the tour, he stayed in England to study for a doctorate at Cambridge University. He was called to the Bar from Middle Temple. While at Cambridge Khan continued playing cricket, winning Blues in all four years. He also made two appearances in Gentlemen v Players matches. In 1935 he played for the Indian Gymkhana, scoring 1380 runs in two months. He played in the three tests of India's 1936 tour of England. Khan is famous for the sparrow incident in 1936 when he was playing for the university against MCC. While bowling to T. N. Pearce, the ball struck and killed a sparrow, which was subsequently stuffed and is now displayed in the museum at Lord's cricket ground. Khan retired from test cricket in 1956.

Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamala Nehru. As Nehru’s daughter, she became actively involved in the struggle for India’s independence. Indira Gandhi was educated at a number of schools and colleges in India and abroad. She first visited Europe in 1926, accompanying her parents to Switzerland for her mother’s convalescence. She visited Paris and London with her parents in 1927 and returned to India in December 1927. In April 1930 she formed the youth wing of the Indian National Congress, the ‘Vanar Sena’. She attended the Ecole de Bex in Switzerland, December 1927; St Mary’s Convent School in Allahabad, May 1931; and The Pupil’s Own School in Pune (Poona), May 1931 - April 1934. She passed her matriculation examination in April 1934 and in July 1934 was admitted to Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, Bengal.

In April 1935 Indira moved to Europe with her mother. In 1936 she joined the Indian National Congress. In February 1936 she attended Badminton School near Bristol and then in 1938 she joined Somerville College, Oxford. In the same year she became a member of the India League and through the contacts of her father was introduced to many figures involved with the Indian struggle for independence in the UK. Krishna Menon persuaded Indira to give speeches at meetings. She was involved with the India League's campaigns especially in support of Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. While in England she met with her future husband Feroze Gandhi, who was also a member of the India League and studying in London. Plagued by ill-health, she was attended to by C. L. Katial and she made repeated trips to convalesce in Switzerland.

Indira returned to India in 1941 together with Feroze Gandhi, whom she married in 1942. She took an active part in the Quit India movement and was imprisoned in Naini Central Jail from September 1942 to March 1943. Indira Gandhi served twice as India's Prime Minister and was assassinated on 31 October 1984.