Paul Leroy Robeson was born in 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, to  William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustill. In 1915 he enrolled at Rutgers College, New Jersey, and in 1920 he entered Columbia University Law School. In 1922 he married his life-long partner Eslanda 'Essie' Cardozo Goode, and the following year he graduated from Columbia. Robeson launched his acting career in 1920 - a career that brought him to London in 1922, and again in 1925 to star in the Eugene O'Neill Play, The Emperor Jones.

Robeson returned to London in April 1928 and spring 1930 to act in Show Boat and Othello, respectively. After a visit to Moscow in 1934, his political views became increasingly influenced by socialist and Communist ideals. He also started associating with key African figures such as Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. In 1934, he acted in Alexander Korda's Sanders of the River, a performance he later repudiated as glorifying British imperialism. His repudiation of British imperialism and growing support of the working class was applauded by Stafford Cripps, the leading Labour politician. There is also evidence that Robeson attended a League of Coloured Peoples meeting, led by Harold Moody, in 1934 (Duberman, p. 624, n. 38).

In the mid-1930s, Robeson met Cedric Dover who broadcast on Robeson for BBC Radio to India. The talk is published in George Orwell's collection Talking to India (1943). In Half-Caste (1937), Dover lauded Robeson: 'To know him, to feel his charm and unusually wide culture, is a privilege; to hear him sing at a packed Albert Hall recital is a spiritual experience' (p. 226). In the late 1930s, Robeson met Krishna Menon, Secretary of the India League. Menon enlisted Robeson's support in the struggle for Indian independence. In January 1938, Robeson visited Spain to support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. In June of that year, Robeson acted in Plant in the Sun. In the audience were Jawaharlal Nehru, his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Krishna Menon who had just come back to London after touring Spain; the four of them became friends, and Robeson and Nehru met on several other occasions. On 27 June 1938, at the India League meeting in Kingsway Hall, Nehru and Robeson spoke on internationalism and the need for unified action against Fascism. Among the other speakers were Stafford Cripps, Harold Laski, Ellen Wilkinson and Rajani Palme Dutt.

Robeson's left-leaning politics were put to the test at the outbreak of the Second World War and the Nazi-Soviet agreement. He had discussed his views on the Soviet Union with other English socialists such as Harold Laski and George Bernard Shaw. Now in the United States, Robeson continued his socialist agitations and with the onset of the Cold War he was under surveillance, his passport was revoked and he was called before the Un-American Activities Committee. When his passport was returned in 1958, he immediately travelled to Europe again. In the 1960s, he went into semi-retirement and he died of a stroke on 23 January 1976 in Philadelphia.

Jomo Kenyatta was born in Ngenda around 1895. After moving to Nairobi, he became involved in the political and cultural life. He became general secretary of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) in 1928. In March 1929 he travelled to Britain on behalf of the KCA with Isher Dass, an Indian lawyer living in Nairobi. He had hoped to meet the imperial authorities but only briefly met senior officials at the Colonial Office. However, he established contacts with other anti-colonial activists in London and the Communist Party like George Padmore and Shapurji Saklatvala.

Kenyatta returned to Africa in 1930 but was back in Britain in 1931. He stayed almost continuously until 1946, with the exception of a few trips to Europe. During this period he was admitted to the London School of Economics to study anthropology under Professor Malinowski. Here, he wrote a number of articles that were later published as Facing Mount Kenya (1938). During this time, he also met a small group of black activists and campaigners, including C. L. R. James, Kwame Nkrumah, Peter Abrahams, Eric Williams and Paul Robeson. He also associated with the India League and the League of Coloured Peoples and met Gandhi when he visited London in November 1931. Throughout the 1930s, Kenyatta attended India League meetings and would have come into contact with Krishna Menon. In September 1939, Makhan Singh, the General Secretary of the Labour Trade Union of East Africa, asked Kenyatta and Krishna Menon to represent his organization at a conference planned for the end of September in Brussels. However, because of the outbreak of the Second World War, the conference never took place.

Through his involvement in the Pan-African Federation, Kenyatta would possibly have met Jawaharlal Nehru. Kenyatta knew N. G. Ranga from early on. In 1945, Kenyatta attended the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester along with Amy Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Ras Makonnen, Surat Alley, and George Padmore among others. He participated in Fabian Society conferences on post-war colonial affairs. Kenyatta returned to Kenya in September 1946 where he assumed leadership of the Kenya African Union. After the Mau Mau uprising in 1952, he was arrested in 1953 and spent the next seven years in prison. In 1962, he returned to London to negotiate the terms of a Kenyan constitution on behalf of the Kenya African National Union before being elected prime minister in June 1963. Kenya became independent in December 1963 and Kenyatta became president the next year. He ruled Kenya until his death on 22 August 1978.

Alexander Korda arrived in Britain having already established himself as a successful film-maker in Hungary. He first became fascinated with film-making during his time in Paris in 1911, where he worked for Pathé Studios. After a successful career in film-making in Hungary, with his own film journal and film studio and as the spokesperson for the Hungarian film industry, political circumstances forced Korda to leave the country. During the 1920s Korda made films in Berlin, for the American Fox Film Corporation, and in 1926 he went to Hollywood where he was offered a contract with First National. For First National, Korda directed two films starring his then wife Maria Corda (The Private Life of Helen of Troy in 1927 and Love and the Devil in 1929) and four with Billie Dove who was Douglas Fairbanks's co-star in The Black Pirate (1926). When the silent film era drew to a close at the beginning of the 1930s and after his divorce from his first wife, Korda returned to Europe. Berlin seemed the obvious choice, with its highly successful UFA film studios. However, threatened by the rise of Nazism in Germany, he opted for Paris where he worked for the American company Paramount, adapting Hollywood versions of films for the French and German market.

Korda arrived in Britain in November 1931 overseeing the UK operations of Paramount. Despite his success with Service for Ladies (1932), starring one of Paramount's rising stars, Leslie Howard, Korda wanted to establish his independence and set up London Film Productions in February 1932. After directing Wedding Rehearsal (1932) for Gaumont-British, Korda produced a number of modestly budgeted films, In the spring of 1933 he began directing a more ambitious production which he hoped would establish the name of London Films, The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), in which his future wife Merle Oberon (they married in 1939) starred as Anne Boleyn. The film was a box office hit, grossing £500,000 within a year. The success of the film led to the idea that Britain had the potential to create an international film industry independent of Hollywood, and within three years of arriving in Britain Korda became a leading player in the UK film industry.  

In the mid 1930s, Korda secured financial backing for his films and for the building of a seven-stage studio at Denham, which later merged with Pinewood Studios. Korda further consolidated his career as an enterprising and innovative producer with his next three films: Sanders of the River (1935), the first in a trilogy of films on the theme of empire, The Ghost Goes West (1935) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). Construction began at Denham in June 1935 and the studios were completed by May the following year. Korda produced a number of big-budget films there, including two H. G. Wells adaptations - Things to Come (1936) and The Man who Could Work Miracles (1936), and two further films celebrating Britain’s imperial legacy (The Drum, 1938, and The Four Feathers, 1939), the former starring the child-actor Sabu. For his empire trilogy, Korda recruited extras from London's lascar community which prompted Chaudhri Akbar Ali Khan to found the Oriental Film Artistes' Union to press for better working conditions and pay for its members.

On 3 June 1939 Korda married Merle Oberon (1911–1979), the Ceylon-born actress who he turned into an international film star. Korda managed to survive the financial crisis which broke over the British film industry in 1937 but he faced increasingly hostile criticism of his extravagance; early in 1938 the Prudential decided to cut its losses and remove Denham from his control. Korda continued to make films at Denham; The Four Feathers, directed by his brother Zoltán, was almost completed when he lost control of Denham. In March 1939 The Thief of Bagdad (1940), which also starred Sabu, began shooting. Over the next few months he travelled several times to Hollywood, where Merle Oberon had returned under contract to Warner Brothers. In June 1940 he moved the production of The Thief of Bagdad to Hollywood, where he was to remain until May 1943. The Thief of Bagdad was completed in October 1940. Korda continued to operate in Hollywood, working with Merle Oberon on Lydia and with his brothers Zoltán and Vincent on an adaptation of Kipling's The Jungle Book (1942) which also starred Sabu.

Korda would become an important tool in Hollywood for providing pro-British propaganda in his films to sway American public opinion, and he allegedly had close links to the British Secret Service. Korda returned to Britain in 1943. He merged London Films with MGM's British operation. In October 1945 Korda extracted London Films from the merger and resigned from MGM. Korda tried to re-kindle the success of London Films, but, faced with a declining market and the rise of television, this would prove difficult, despite the success of films such as Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) and Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950). Alexander Korda died on 23 January 1956 of a heart attack at his home in London.

 Sabu became in the 1930s Britain's first leading film star of Indian origin, who achieved international fame as well. His first big break came when the veteran documentary film maker Robert Flaherty cast him as Toomai, the lead role in the Alexander Korda-produced Elephant Boy (1937) based on Kipling’s story ‘Toomai of the Elephants’.

Sabu was born on 27 January 1924 in Karapur, Mysore. He was orphaned at an early age – his mother died when he was very young and he was raised by his father, a mahout, or elephant driver, who died in 1931. The six-year-old Sabu became the ward of the Maharaja of Mysore, where he worked first as a stable boy, then as a mahout. Elephant Boy had a troubled two-year gestation, with Flaherty being replaced by Zoltán Korda as director and Sabu brought to England for further filming. Although the film received mixed reviews, it made Sabu an instant star and the film was a big box-office hit. The film was the official British entry at the Venice Film Festival and won the award for best direction. While in London, Sabu was taken on a tour of the British capital, broadcast over the BBC, televised at Alexandra Palace, sat for a sculpture by Lady Kennet and a portrait by Egerton Cooper. Alexander Korda quickly signed him up to a long-term contract. He starred for Korda in The Drum (d. Zoltán Korda, 1938) based on the novel by A. E. Mason, in which he plays young Prince Azim.

He went on to star as Abu in The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Sabu remained in Hollywood for the duration of World War II. He made a final film for Korda and London Films, The Jungle Book (1942), in which he played Mowgli. He remained in Hollywood after his contract expired; signing with Universal Pictures. He adopted US citizenship in 1944 and joined the US Air Force, flying several missions as a tail-gunner towards the end of the war. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He returned to Britain in 1946, where he joined the director/producers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger for his last two British films. In Black Narcissus (1947), in which Sabu gives his most nuanced performance, he plays a young general. The End of the River (1947) gave him another leading role. In 1952/53 he returned briefly to the UK, to perform an elephant act at the Haringey Circus. Sabu spent the rest of his career making relatively undistinguished Hollywood films and building a successful career in property. He died of a heart attack at the age of 39, shortly after completing the film A Tiger Walks (1963) with Disney

Udham Singh was a political activist from the Punjab. He was closely linked to communist activists and parties associated with the independence movement. During the early 1920s, after a brief three-month stay in Dover in 1921, he spent some time in the US, working in Detroit for the Ford Motor Company as a tool maker, before relocating to California. While in California, he established contacts with the Ghadar Party, which was dedicated to Indian freedom and independence. It had strong communist tendencies and was founded by South Asians living in America and Canada. He returned to India in 1927.

Back in the Punjab, Udham Singh was arrested for the illegal possession of firearms and sentenced to five years imprisonment. Singh was released from prison in October 1931. He managed to acquire a passport and made his way to London in 1934. In his application for his passport endorsement, he claimed to have been working as a sports outfitter in India, but since his arrival, living in Canterbury, Kent, he was unable to secure employment. There are suggestions that in this period he worked as a pedlar. During 1937, he worked as an extra in crowd scenes for Alexander Korda’s London Studios at Denham. During 1938, he worked as a carpenter at the RAF Station at Great Chessington, Gloucestershire, before becoming unemployed.

Udham Singh was well known in the Indian community at the time and also had contacts with Sikh pedlars living in Coventry, and Southampton. The objective of his stay in London was to find an opportunity to assassinate Michael O’Dwyer, the Governor of the Punjab in 1919, whom Singh held responsible for the Amritsar massacre, which had left a lasting impression on Singh after his brother and sister were killed there. Subsequently he had sworn to avenge the massacre. Singh had had a few opportunities to assassinate O’Dwyer but he was waiting for an occasion when his actions would have the most public impact.

On 13 March 1940, Singh shot O’Dwyer at a meeting of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asian Society at Caxton Hall. O’Dwyer was killed instantly and Lord Zetland, Lord Lamington and Louis Dane were also hit and wounded by the shots. Singh was immediately arrested and held in Brixton prison. There he staged a thirty-six day hunger strike, which resulted in him being forcibly fed through a tube. The assassination of O’Dwyer was reported widely in the press. In police statements and at court Singh gave his name as Mohamed Singh Azad as a symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity in the fight for Indian freedom. He was tried at the Old Bailey on 4 June 1940. Krishna Menon was part of his defence team. After a trial in which the prosecution presented a simple case and the defence of Singh was often sketchy and chaotic he was sentenced to death by hanging on 5 June and executed on 31 July at Pentonville Prison, where he was also buried. In 1974, his body was repatriated to India and cremated in his home village of Sunam.

Akbar Ali Khan came to Britain in the 1930s. He first stayed in London and found work as an extra in crowd scenes in empire films. He co-founded the Oriental Film Artistes’ Union with Surat Alley and acted as its President. In London, Akbar Ali Khan was involved with groups campaigning for Indian self-determination, such as the India League. He attended many meetings and spoke at the Indian independence rally at Conway Hall in January 1940.

He moved to Birmingham in 1940 and subsequently to Coventry, working as a labourer at the Daimler factory. Although his name suggests that he might be Muslim, the India Office thought that he might be Sikh. A memo on the Indian Workers' Union noted on 17 December 1942 that he ‘is...totally westernized and a Muhammedan in name only; he lives in a Sikh establishment’ (L/PJ/12/646). Khan was the president of the Indian Workers’ Association in Coventry. He was particularly interested in the political organization of Indians living in Britain and was instrumental in the Association’s expansion in the Midlands and northern England, helping to start up IWA branches in Wolverhampton, Newcastle and Manchester. He was also instrumental in helping to set up the IWA’s monthly bulletin, Indian Worker, published in Urdu.

Akbar Ali Khan actively campaigned against the compulsory conscription of Indians living in Britain during the Second World War. He resigned as President of the Central Committee of the Indian Workers' Association (Birmingham) in July 1943. The linking of the IWA and Swaraj House through the Federation of Indian Associations in Great Britain brought about the temporary retirement of Akbar Ali Khan from the political scene. He feared that the IWA might be taken over by Surat Alley. By 1945 Akbar Ali Khan was re-elected as IWA President and disengaged the IWA from the Federation of Indian Associations of Great Britain. He was also an active member of the Committee of Indian Congressmen and the Indian National Army Defence Committee.

Merle Oberon was born in India to a Welsh father, Arthur Thompson, who worked in Bombay as a railway engineer and his Ceylonese wife Constance. She was educated in India until the age of 17, when she left for London, where she worked as a hostess in the Café de Paris and as an extra in British films. In the early 1930s, she was discovered by the film producer Alexander Korda, whom she later married (they divorced in 1945), who cast her as Anne Boleyn in his 1933 film The Private Life of Henry VIII and created her screen name Merle Oberon for her. Her most critically acclaimed performance was in the 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights as Cathy, starring alongside Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff.

Oberon had a complex relationship with her dual heritage, especially after her move to Hollywood. On her arrival in England in 1927, she would call herself ‘Tasmanian’, thinking that her mixed-race heritage and her Indian origin might be an obstacle to her career. In company she would introduce her mother, who for many years accompanied her, as her maid.

Oberon worked with prestigious directors such as Korda, Ernst Lubitsch, René Clair, Jules Duvivier, King Vidor, and William Wylerand starred alongside some of Hollywood’s most famous male stars, Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, Douglas Fairbanks senior, Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier, George Sanders, and Marlon Brando among them.

Oberon died of a stroke in Los Angeles on 23 November 1979.

Maharajkumari Indira Devi was born on 26 February 1912 to Maharaja Paramjit Singh and Maharani Brinda of Kapurthala. She left India for Britain in 1935 at the age of twenty-three. Only her sisters Princesses Sushila and Ourmilla knew of her intentions. In England she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London with a view to becoming a movie star. While she did not fulfil this ambition, she managed to work briefly with Alexander Korda at London Films, who wanted to launch her as his next big star after Merle Oberon. However the difficulties of the film industry in the late 1930s meant she did not get her big break in the movie business.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Indira Devi successfully passed the St John Ambulance examination and drove motor ambulances during air raids. She also worked for a while as a postal censor. She joined the BBC in 1942 and became known as the ‘Radio Princess’. She hosted a half-hour radio programme in Hindustani for Indian forces stationed in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. She broadcast the programme 'The Debate continues', a weekly report to India on the proceedings in the House of Commons, where she was the only woman in the Press Gallery. She broadcast many talks series for the Indian Section of the Eastern Service Division. She also broadcast on the Home Service. She was offered a permanent contract with the Overseas Service Division in 1943. She continued to work for the BBC until 1968. Princess Indira died in Ibiza, Spain in September 1979.