Jayapal Jayakar was the son of M. R. Jayakar, a former judge of the Federal Court of India. He was sent to Oxford in 1932 by his father who enlisted the help of Dhanvathi Rama Rau and Edward Thompson to look after him when he arrived in Britain. Jayakar was unable to gain admission into Oxford University at the first attempt but remained in Oxford to study for the entrance exams, and became a member of the Oxford Majlis and Lotus Club in the meantime. He passed through Oxford in 1937 and married a British woman. Jayakar was interested in flying and became a Pilot Officer. The picture above shows Jayakar on 19 January 1940 giving Link Trainer instruction which trains pilots in a non-flying aeroplane. He was the first Indian to receive a commission in the RAF.

Robert Bridges was born in Walmer, Kent, to father John Thomas Bridges and mother Harriet Elizabeth Affleck. He entered Eton College in 1854 and started writing poetry, and enrolled at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in the Michaelmas term of 1863. In 1872 he joined the Savile Club where he got to know Edmund William Gosse.

In 1884, Bridges married Monica Waterhouse, who was a cousin of Roger Fry. Through this marriage, Bridges was introduced to a younger generation of writers who included W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Graves, Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. In 1912, William Rothenstein introduced Bridges to Rabindranath Tagore, whom he met again in Oxford in 1913. Tagore had won the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali in 1913 and Bridges wanted to include excerpts from it in his anthology, The Spirit of Man (1915). Gitanjali had been introduced to the British public by W. B. Yeats in 1912. Yeats and Rothenstein were to play an instrumental role in the communication between Tagore and Bridges. The controversy surrounding Tagore's inclusion in Bridges' anthology stems from Bridges' desire to refine the English of one of the Gitanjali poems. But Tagore refused and it was only the intervention of Yeats, at Bridges' request, that persuaded Tagore to let Bridges make the changes. Bridges only met Tagore on very few occasions; otherwise their relationship was entirely through correspondence and mutual friends.

One of those mutual friends was Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy, a student at Oxford, who assisted Bridges in choosing 'Oriental' poems for his anthology. In a letter to Bridges dated 8 July 1914, Tagore mentions his affection for Suhrawardy: 'I am glad you speak so well of Suhrawardy for whom I felt a very great attraction when I came to know him in Oxford, and the memory of my meeting with him still gives me pleasure.'

Basanta Kumar Mallik enrolled at Oxford in 1912 and soon became a frequent guest at Bridges' Boar's Hill home, where also W. B. Yeats was a frequent visitor.

In 1913, Bridges was made poet laureate and he remained a best selling poet throughout the 1920s. He died at his home on 21 April 1930. 

Edward John Thompson was a historian, novelist and translator. He was an ordained Wesleyan (although he later resigned his ordination) and in 1910 he went to Bankura Wesleyan College in Bengal to teach English literature. In Bengal he became acquainted with Rabindranath Tagore, and was present in Santiniketan when Tagore heard that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. The relationship between the poet and Thompson was often marked by tension and misunderstanding.

In 1923, Thompson settled in Oxford and taught Bengali to ICS probationers. He translated works from Bengali to English, and was involved with the India Society. In 1922 he wrote the introduction to a collection of short stories by Sita and Santa Chatterjee, entitled Tales of Bengal. He became a Leverhulme Research Fellow (1934–6), and Honorary Fellow and Research Fellow in Indian history at Oriel College (1936–40). He maintained contact and correspondence with many Indians, and also formed friendships with Indian students at Oxford and other Indian visitors to the UK. The Rhodes Trust funded several visits to India by Thompson in the 1930s and it was he who suggested that the Trust provide grants and prizes for Indian writers (although these plans did not come to fruition).

Thompson was a friend to Indian politicians, including those who visited the UK for the Round Table Conferences in the 1930s. Thompson had been involved in the suggestion of inviting Jawaharlal Nehru as Rhodes Visiting Lecturer to Oxford in 1940, but Viceroy Linlithgrow advised against this visit. Thompson had close contact with other Congress leaders such as M. K. Gandhi. He died in April 1946 before he could see independence realized for the subcontinent. 

Jaipal Singh was the son of a Bihari adivasi (tribal) farmer. He studied at St Paul's School in Ranchi (Bihar) and was taken under the wing of the Principal, Canon Cosgrave. He was baptized and in November 1918 accompanied Canon Cosgrave back to England - the Canon having retired from the Ranchi school to take up the parish of Darlington. Jaipal Singh arrived in England in the aftermaths of the First World War and initially stayed in Darlington with the Canon. Three wealthy unmarried women, the Forsters, helped to take care of Jaipal Singh financially. He was sent to St Augustine's College in Canterbury to train for the priesthood, but after two terms, Bishop Arthur Mesacknight, the warden, sent him to Oxford - using his connections with Dr James, the president of St John's College.

Jaipal Singh matriculated at St John's College, Oxford, in Michaelmas 1922. He was awarded the Hertfordshire Scholarship of forty pounds by Bishop Knight and the Forsters bore most of the rest of his Oxford bills. Jaipal Singh studied PPE and was awarded a 4th in 1926. He was elected Secretary in 1924 and then President in 1925 of the St John's College Debating Society. He was a member of the Essay Society, a member of the college football XI in 1925-6, and the college hockey XI throughout his time at the college. Jaipal Singh also represented the University Hockey XI in Varsity matches from 1924 to 1926 and hence was awarded a hockey Blue. Jaipal Singh started the Oxford Hermits - a sports society for 'Asiatics' in Oxford - they mainly played hockey. Jaipal Singh then took the Indian Civil Service (ICS) exams, and was a probationary student at St John's.

In the meantime, Singh was involved in Indian students' hockey tours of Europe and the formation of the India Hockey Federation. In 1928, he captained the India Hockey Team at the Amsterdam Olympics. They won all their games without conceding a goal, and were awarded the gold medal. He often frequented Veeraswamy's restaurant in Regent Street and the victorious team were also feted at the restaurant and at 21 Cromwell Road.

Having taken part in the Olympics, Singh's ICS training was delayed and he then decided to quit the ICS. Through the Darlington MP, Lord Pake Pense, Singh was introduced to Viscount Bearstead, Chairman of Shell Transport and Trading Company who arranged for a job for Singh with the Burnham-Shell Oil Storage and Distributing Company of India. He was the first Indian to be appointed to a covenanted mercantile assistant in Royal Dutch Shell group, and after a probationary period in London was sent to Calcutta. In Calcutta, Singh met many British officials, clergymen and Indians through his contacts from his time in Britain. He met and married Tara Majumdar, the daughter of P. K. and Agnes Majumdar and grand-daughter of W. C. Bonnerjee. Singh took up a number of educational posts, including a position teaching commerce at Achimota College, Gold Coast, and then soon got involved in politics back in India. Singh presided over the All-India Adibasi Mahasabha, an organization that campaigned for tribal rights. After Indian independence the party became the Jharkand Party and saw their aims realized in 2000 when Jharkand was designated a separate state from Bihar.  

Ernest Dowson was a poet. In the late 1890s, Dowson also translated French literature into English (including Zola, Balzac and Voltaire). He was one of a batch of young poets who represent the work of the last decade of the nineteenth century in England. He was intimately involved with the Rhymers' Club in London during this period, but died at a young age (32) from a combination of drink, depression and ill-health resulting from severe financial problems.

In 1886, Dowson entered Queen's College, Oxford. In his second year, an Indian student called Satis Chandra Mookerjee joined the college. As a result of his praise of bhang, Dowson and his friends experimented with cannabis. Dowson remained in touch with Mookerjee; they were both part of a group of four who visited the Gaiety Theatre in March 1889 (see Dowson letter to Arthur Moore, 24 March 1889).

Dowson left Oxford in 1888 and it was in London, in September 1890, that Lionel Johnson introduced Dowson to the Primavera poet and former Oxford student Manmohan Ghose. From letters to various friends, it appears that Dowson became quite enamoured with Ghose, describing him variously as 'charming' and 'beautiful lotus-eyed'. His correspondence mentions Ghose until the middle of 1891 when Dowson was planning to bring out a book called 'The Book of the Rhymers Club' which he hoped would include Ghose's work. When the book did come out, Ghose's name was not among the contributors who included Lionel Johnson, T. W. Rolleston, Arthur Symons and W. B. Yeats.

Ikbal Ali Shah was the Son of the Nawab of Sardhana, and great grandson of the Afghan statesman Jan Fishan Khan. He came to Britain before the First World War and studied at Oxford and Edinburgh University, where he met his wife, the Scottish author Morag Murray. They had three children, the Sufi writers and translators Amina Shah (1918), Omar Ali-Shah (1922-2005) and Idries Shah (1924-96), with whom Doris Lessing later studied Sufism. He wrote collections of tales and adventure, like The Golden Caravan, as well as non-fiction like The Spirit of the East. He later taught Sufi "classes" in England, which were the precursors to the Sufi school established by his son, Idries Shah. Ikbal Ali Shah also wrote biographies, including on President Kemal Attaturk whom he claims to have known personally.

Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah was a prolific writer of articles, and books relating to South Asia, Sufism and the Muslim World. He published in The Bookman and other journals, but struggled to live by his writing. In 1939 he contacted the India Office for work as a writer in the Information Department, for whom he wrote articles useful for Muslim papers in India and he provided the Ministry with a regular service of news along these lines. In a letter dated 19 January 1939, A. H. Joyce (Secretary Political, External Department) stated that the India Office had known Ikbal Ali Shah ‘as a contributor of articles, principally to the provincial newspapers in this country, on matters affecting the Muslim world and particularly those affecting India and Afghanistan. He is also the author of quite a number of books of a popular type covering a similar field’ (L/I/1/1509). He was also a prolific speaker and addressed the Oxford Majlis in 1941 on the topic ‘Incompatibility of Islamic and Fascist Philosophies’, and lascars in the East End on ‘English, Their Country and Their Ways’. He also wrote a paper ‘Little Arabia in Britain', on Cardiff’s Muslim community.

Ikbal Ali Shah was linked to the controversy surrounding the 1967 publication of a new translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, by his son Omar Ali-Shah and the English poet Robert Graves. The translation was based on an annotated "crib", supposedly derived from an old manuscript said to have been in the Shah family's possession for 800 years. L. P. Elwell-Sutton, an Orientalist at Edinburgh University, and others who reviewed the book, expressed their conviction that the story of the ancient family manuscript was false. Graves had been led to believe that Ikbal Ali Shah had access to the disputed manuscript. Shah was about to produce it at the time of his death from a car accident, to allay the growing controversy surrounding the translation. He and his wife are buried in the Muslim section of the cemetery at Brookwood, Woking, Surrey.

Solomon Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, the fourth prime minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), spent six years in England. He studied between 1919 and 1925 at Christ Church College, Oxford. During his time there, he lived with a working class family as a shortage of rooms in the College had forced Christ Church to find lodgings elsewhere. Bandaranaike was struck by the hierarchical structure and social conventions that excluded him from the student fraternity.

During his first year at Oxford, his father moved to London for a year together with his sister who was presented as a debutante at Buckingham Palace in 1920. Bandaranaike tried hard to fit in and found it difficult to deal with his fellow students’ rejection, especially considering his own family’s preoccupation with status and power. In 1920 he was allotted a room in Christ Church College, sharing a corridor with Anthony Eden. After passing his classics exams with a second class degree, he switched to law.

In his third year at Oxford he became actively involved in the Oxford Union, delivering speeches on democracy, policies on India, and the British government’s policies in Egypt. He established himself as a regular speaker at the Union and his performance was praised in the Oxford Magazine for its ‘vigorous thinking and his animated, insistent delivery’ (4 May 1922) . In June 1923, he became Secretary of the Oxford Union and in March 1924 was elected Junior Treasurer. His exposure to Indian Nationalism at Oxford had a profound impact on his world view. It led him to conclude that his father’s political support for the British and the feudal system in Ceylon were anachronistic.

Bandaranaike returned to Ceylon in 1925 and became actively involved in the island’s politics and independence movement. He was elected to the Colombo Municipal Council in 1926 and joined the United National Party. He was a member of the State Legislature from 1931 onwards. He became Ceylon’s fourth prime minister in 1956 and was assassinated in 1959.