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Asa Briggs won the Universities' Essay Prize whilst a student at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1941 with a BA (Arts) as well as a BSc in Economics from the University of London's Open Programme. He served in the Intelligence Corps working at Bletchley Park during World War II. After the war, he pursued an academic career at Oxford, Princeton, Leeds, Sussex, Oxford again and the Open University. In the 1976 Birthday Honours, he was created a life peer as Baron Briggs, of Lewes in the County of East Sussex. Between 1961 and 1995, Briggs wrote a five-volume text on the history of broadcasting in the UK from 1922 to 1974, essentially, the history of the BBC, who commissioned the work. Briggs' other works ranged from an account of the period that Karl Marx spent in London to the corporate history of British retailer Marks and Spencer. In 1987, Lord Briggs was invited to be President of the Brontë Society, and was also President of the William Morris Society from 1978 to 1991 and President of the Victorian Society (UK) from 1986 until his death.

He died at home in Lewes at the age of 94 on 15 March 2016.

Bridget Allchin FSA (10 February 1927 – 27 June 2017) was an archaeologist who specialised in South Asian archaeology. She was born Bridget Gordon in Oxford but was raised on a farm in Galloway, Scotland. Bridget started a degree in History and Ancient History at University College London but, at the end of her first year, left for South Africa when her parents decided to emigrate. Interested in the culture of neighbouring Basutoland, Bridget persuaded her parents to let her leave the farm and recommence her studies. Enrolling at the University of Cape Town she read African Studies, which included anthropology, archaeology and African language. While there, she learnt to speak Sesotho and took up flying lessons.

Taught by Professor Isaac Shapira and Dr A. J. H. Goodwin, Bridget developed a specialism in the South African Stone Age but decided to return to England and in 1950 she began a PhD at the Institute of Archaeology studying under Professor Frederick Zeuner. Whilst studying, in 1950 Bridget met fellow PhD student Raymond Allchin and married in March 1951.  Travelling to India for the first time with Raymond in 1951, Bridget began to establish herself as a prominent South Asian Prehistorian in the UK and a pioneering female field-archaeologist in South Asia at a time when there were none. Her research interests and publications stretched across South Asia from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka. At first Bridget's academic and organisational skills were dedicated to supporting Raymond's fieldwork but, despite not holding a full-time academic post, she successfully raised funds and established a number of innovative field projects. This included directing fieldwork in the Great Thar Desert with Professor K. T. M. Hegde of the M.S. University of Baroda and Professor Andrew Goudie of the University of Oxford. Bridget subsequently developed links with the Pakistan Geological Survey and played a critical role in initiating collaborations which resulted in a survey of the Potwar Plateau directed by Professor Robin Dennell of the University of Sheffield and Professor Helen Rendell of the University of Sussex to search for Palaeolithic industries during the second phase of the British Archaeological Mission to Pakistan with the support of the Leverhulme Trust.

An independent author and researcher in her own right, she published The Stone-Tipped Arrow: a Study of Late Stone Age Cultures of the Tropical Regions of the Old World (1966) and The Prehistory and Palaeography of the Great Indian Desert (with Andrew Goudie and K. T. M. Hegde: 1978) and Living Traditions: Studies in the Ethnoarchaeology of South Asia (1994).

Away from the field, Bridget held the role of founding Editor of the Journal of South Asian Studies for over a decade and was Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA) and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. She was a founding trustee of the Ancient India and Iran Trust and was its Secretary and chairman, as well as founding member and Secretary General of the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists, editing a number of its proceedings. 

She died in Norwich on 27 June 2017 at the age of 90.

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Brian Houghton Hodgson was born in 1801 (possibly 1800, there is some uncertainty to the date), the second of seven children. He entered Haileybury in February 1816, finishing top in his year in Bengali, Persian, Hindi, Political Economy, and Classics. As head of his year at Haileybury, Hodgson was entitled to choose the Presidency to which he would be sent. Hodgson chose Bengal and arrived in Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1818 to continue his studies at Fort William. However Hodgson became ill with a 'liver condition' and he was advised to seek an appointment at a hill station. He was posted as Assistant Commissioner to Kumaon. He was in Kumaon for only a year before being appointed as Assistant Resident in Nepal, working under Edward Gardner. It was during this residency that Hodgson began his research into Buddhism and collected Sanskrit manuscripts.

Hodgson was recalled to Calcutta in 1822 as acting Deputy Secretary in the Persian Department of the Foreign Office – a key role but one that he could not maintain due to further illness. He returned to Kathmandu, in 1824, as the Postmaster and became Resident in 1829 until 1843. Hodgson developed interests, not only in Buddhism, but in the languages of the people, in zoology, and in ethnography. He continued to collect manuscripts which he deposited with institutions in Europe and India.

Hodgson's interest in zoology meant that he employed local trappers and hunters, alongside draughtsmen and painters, to collect and record indigenous species. He published 97 papers on the birds and mammals of Nepal and his interest was keenest during the 1930s when Dr Archibald Campbell was his Assistant Resident. He also introduced tea cultivation into the Himalayas.

As Resident, Hodgson would be expected to report on the political situation of the area. He wrote papers on the possibility of trade with China along a trans-Himalayan route, on the legal system, the police and the army of Nepal. He was also interested in the neighbouring countries.

Whilst in Nepal Hodgson was in a relationship with Meharrunisha Begum. His son, Henry, was born in 1835, and his daughter, Sarah, in 1836. He left Nepal in 1844 having resigned due to disagreement with the political policy of Lord Ellenborough. He did not settle in England – he left his children with his sister, Fanny, in Arnhem and sailed for Calcutta in July 1845. He decided to go to Darjeeling with the Campbells, where he bought a bungalow and named it Brianstone, and continued his zoological and ethnographical studies.

Hodgson's daughter died from TB in 1851, and his son returned to India in 1853 to become a Zamindar, but he died in 1856 in Darjeeling. Hodgson returned to Europe in 1853 for a brief period, during which time he married Anne Scott, who returned to Darjeeling with Hodgson later that year. After 1853 Hodgson concentrated more on ethnology and linguistics, than zoology. Anne returned to England in 1857 and Hodgson followed her in 1858.

Hodgson lived in England for a further 36 years before his death in 1894. He remained active in his interest of India and Nepal. Anne died in 1868 but Hodgson remarried the following year to Susan Townshend. She was only 26 years old at the time of their marriage but they seemed happy. Hodgson was awarded an honorary doctorate at Oxford in 1889. He died in London on 23 May 1894 and was buried in the church yard at Alderley.