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Desmond Murree Fitzgerald Hoysted was born at Murree in the Panjab, his father, who later became Surgeon-General, Madras Presidency, Indian Army, being then stationed in India. Educated at Kugby School and the Royal Military Academy, he was appointed to the Royal Engineers, and promoted in 1894 Lieutenant in the 26th Field Company, R.E. He served in the Alexandria Garrison of the British Army of Occupation in Egypt, and it was during this long service in Egypt that he acquired a taste for Oriental subjects. In 1930, retiring form the army, he took up the post of Secretary, Royal Asiatic Society, which he held for ten years until 1940.

John Duncan Martin Derrett was Professor of Oriental Laws at the University of London, from 1965 to 1982, and afterwards Emeritus Professor.

Derrett was educated at Emanuel School, London, Jesus College, Oxford and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, before studying law at the Inns of Court School, London. He was called to the bar, Gray's Inn, in 1953. He is the author of a number of works on law and the history of systems of law, India, religion (particularly Christianity) and comparative religion. In his later life he was particularly interested in comparisons of Christianity with Buddhism. Derrett also translated works by others into English.

Derek Davis was born on 3 May 1945 and educated at Clifton College, a school renowned for its excellence in classical and modern language teaching. By 1962 he had a Russian A level, had visited Russia and, armed with Hindi-Russian dictionaries and conversational phrasebook, was at Scindia School, Gwalior, where he taught Shakespeare, Dickens and Gerald Durrell to 13-year-olds who would go on to become public servants, generals, admirals, businessmen and academics. He then went up to Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Greats.

During the Oxford long vacation of 1965, he embarked on an overland trek to India via Erzurum and back with his Balliol friend, Christopher Bayly. An unexpected consequence was that the latter changed his proposed research subject from Russian and Eastern European history to work instead (with Professor Sarvepalli Gopal) on South Asia.

His career in the civil service left little time for Pushkin, but on his retirement, he continued to work on his translations of the History of Pugachev and the Journey to Arzrum which was published by the Royal Asiatic Society as a supplement to their Journal in 2022. He also served on the Society's Council and its Finance and Investment Committee.

He died on 8 July 2023.