G. V. Desani was born in Nairobi, Kenya, where his parents were working as wood merchants. The family returned to Karachi in 1914, where Desani was educated. He arrived in Britain at the age of 17, to escape from an arranged marriage. When he arrived in England in 1926, he was befriended by George Lansbury, who helped him acquire a reader's pass to the British Museum Reading Room. During this period he also found work as an actor in films. Furthermore, he worked as a foreign corespondent for a number of Indian newspapers and news agencies, such as the Associated Press, Reuters and The Times of India. He returned to India in 1928, touring Rajasthan, on which he subsequently lectured extensively for the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway Company.

Desani returned to Britain in the summer of 1939, only weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War.  He continued to work as a writer, journalist, and broadcaster for the Indian Section of the BBC Eastern Service and the Home Division. Desani broadcast both in Hindustani and in English and was praised for his wit, humour and ability as a script-writer. He also acted in radio plays. Furthermore, Desani lectured for the Ministry of Information and the Imperial Institute, regularly touring the regions and speaking to soldiers, schools and university colleges. These lectures featured as one of his Talks Programmes in Hindustani, titled 'My Lecture Tours' (broadcast 8 May 1943). They were widely praised and drew large audiences.

During this period, he wrote his best known work of fiction, the experimental novel All About Mr. Hatterr (later republished and revised as All About H. Hatterr). On publication the book was very well received by critics. For example, T. S. Eliot praised it as a remarkably original book: 'It is amazing that anyone should be able to sustain a piece of work in this style and tempo and at such length'. The critic C. E. M. Joad compared the book to 'Joyce and Miller with a difference: the difference being due to a dash of Munchhausen and the Arabian Nights'.  With its inventive use of language and its endorsement of hybridity, the work is a trailblazer for the fiction of Salman Rushdie, who has acknowledged its influence.

While in England, Desani also published his ‘poetic play’ Hali, as well as short fiction, sketches and essays. Shortly after the publication of Hali, Desani left Britain and returned to India. He was offered a position as cultural ambassador for Jawaharlal Nehru, however he did not take this up. In 1959 he travelled to Burma to study Buddhist and Hindu culture. During the 1950s and 1960 he wrote a regular column, 'Very High, Very Low', as well as articles for The Times of India and Illustrated Weekly of India. In 1967 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. He spent the final years of his life in Dallas.

Sudhindra Nath Ghose was a Bengali novelist. After studying at the University of Calcutta, he travelled to Europe in the 1920s to continue his studies in Western Art at the University of Strasbourg where he graduated with a D.Litt. He subsequently worked as a research scholar at the Universities of London, Paris, Berlin, and Geneva. While at university he worked as a journalist, becoming foreign correspondent for The Hindu of Madras from 1924-32. He was also associate editor of World's Youth, the official organ of the YMCA from 1929-31. In 1931, he joined the staff of the Information Section of the League of Nations Secretariat in Geneva.

Ghose moved to England in 1940. He lectured to H. M. Forces and to US units about India from 1940-6. He was part of the panel of speakers that regularly toured for the India-Burma Association. Much of the research of his papers was conducted in the British Museum Reading Room, for which he had a reader’s pass. In the late 1940s, Ghose worked as the librarian for Student Movement House, 103 Gower Street, London, WC1, trying to persuade the British Council to offer translations of books about British life into Indian languages. He also organized its literary events. Ghose was not part of the Indian organizations fighting for independence, but worked as part of the political system and through his lectures tried to counter what he called ‘the systematic misrepresentation and vilification of Great Britain’ (Mss Eur F 153). He wrote lengthy reports on India League meetings and also attended meetings of the Committee of Indian Congressmen in Great Britain in the 1940s to write detailed reports for the India-Burma Association. Furthermore, Ghose wrote reports for the India-Burma Association following his lectures for Bevin trainees ('Bevin Boys') from India at Letchworth in 1944, fearing they might be led astray by Indian organizations campaigning for Indian independence in Britain.

Ghose was the proof-reader for the Bengali version of the government-produced brochure ‘War in Pictures’. During the war, he also worked as an ARP Warden in North Ealing. He tried on several occasions to get work with the BBC Eastern Service. He was invited to participate in a Round Table Discussion on India for the Home Service Department in May 1942. He was severely criticized by his friends at the Bibliophile Bookshop for taking part in this debate. Subsequently he became an occasional broadcaster for the BBC. He was commissioned by George Orwell in June 1942 to write a talk programme on the Future of Hinduism. However the talk was not accepted for broadcast, as Orwell thought it was not altogether suitable. Bokhari had blocked the broadcast of the programme for fear of antagonising the Hindu community in India and Ghose was subsequently released from his contract because he was deemed to be too expensive, after another venture for a Bengali-language news bulletin fell through. While the organization recognized Ghose’s proficiency in Bengali and his excellent delivery as a microphone speaker, it did not rate him as a script writer and did not employ him again.

Ghose was intensely critical of the Eastern Service, especially Bokhari and Anand, whose left-leaning politics he denounced in his private papers. Ghose alleged that Anand, Shelvankar, and Bokhari were conspiring against him. From 1943 onwards Ghose was a lecturer for the Imperial Institute’s Empire Lecture Scheme to Schools. After the end of the war, he stayed in England and continued to lecture on eastern and western art, architecture, philosophy and literature. He also published a successful tetraology of novels, based on his childhood in Bengal. He returned to India as a Visiting Professor of English at Visvabharati University, Santiniketan from 1957-8. He died in London in 1965 from a heart attack.