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Sir George Thomas Staunton was born near Salisbury, the son of the diplomat, George Leonard Staunton. Aged 12, George Thomas accompanied his father on the Macartney Embassy to China, and his Chinese language ability was sufficient for conversation. In 1798 was appointed a writer in the British East India Company's factory at Canton (Guangzhou), and subsequently its chief. He continued to study Chinese and in 1805 he translated a work of Dr George Pearson into Chinese, followed, five years later, by an English translation of a significant part of the Chinese legal code.

In 1816 Staunton was second commissioner on a special mission to Beijing with Lord Amherst and Sir Henry Ellis.  The embassy was unsuccessful and shortly after it departed back to Britain Staunton decided to leave China permanently. In England he bought the Leigh estate in 1820 and constructed a new home. Staunton was a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society and donated many items to its Collections.

Sir Gore Ouseley, 1st Baronet GCH, PC (24 June 1770 – 18 November 1844), was a British entrepreneur, linguist and diplomat. He was born in Ireland and educated at home. Whilst serving the British Government and posted in Lucknow he became a friend of the local Nawab Saadat Ali Khan and was responsible for building a palace called Dilkusha Kothi on the banks of the Gomti near Lucknow. This palace, a copy of the English Baroque stately home of Seaton Delaval Hall, stood for about fifty years until it was damaged in the Siege of Lucknow. Ouseley was made a baronet in 1808 with the recommendation of Lord Wellesley.
From 1810 Ouseley served as ambassador to Persia, the first ambassador since the time of Charles I. Ouseley was involved in negotiating treaties with Persia and Russia including the Treaty of Gulistan. He left Persia in 1814, stopping off in St Petersburg. While in Russia, he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Russian Order of St. Alexander Nevsky.
Ouseley spent his final years in England and in 1835, he served as the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire. He died in 1844 died at Hall Barn Park, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.

Graves Chamney Haughton (1788-1849) was educated in England before travelling to India in 1808 with the East India Company. He became proficient in Hindustani, studying at Fort William College. He returned to England in 1815 and in 1817 was appointed assistant professor at Haileybury College and held the post of professor of Sanskrit and Bengali from 1819 to 1827. He was supported by various prominent academics when he attempted in 1832 to be elected as the first Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University but he stood down in favour of Horace Hayman Wilson. He was a founding member of the Royal Asiatic Society and served as its Librarian from 1831-1837. He died of cholera in Paris on 28 August 1849.

Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb was a Scottish historian on Orientalism, teaching first at the School of Oriental Studies, London, and subsequently at the University of Oxford before moving to Harvard University in 1955. He was a trustee of the Gibb Memorial Trust.

Henry Creswicke Rawlinson was born in 1810 in Oxfordshire. He sailed to India 1827, to take up a cadetship in the East India Company's army. In 1833 he was sent to Persia with other British officers to organise and train the Persian army. It was during his duty in Persia that he first saw the great trilingual cuneiform inscription at Behistun (Bisitun) and began his work on cuneiform decipherment. In 1839 the British military officers were withdrawn as a result of a change in Persian foreign policy.

In 1841, Rawlinson joined the British military contingent in Afghanistan, where he was stationed at Kandahar as political agent (consul). When the Afghans rose against the British, he was required to organise the defence of Kandahar, which he did successfully. In 1842, on his return from Afghanistan, much of his property, including most of his papers, was lost when a river boat caught fire on the river Sutlej. In 1843, Rawlinson was posted to Baghdad as political agent, where he spent the rest of his East India Company career, and resumed work on cuneiform inscriptions. He returned to England from 1849-1851 on sick leave. But in 1851 he was entrusted by the Trustees of the British Museum with supervision of the archaeological excavations at Nimrud after A H Layard abandoned archaeology for a career in politics and diplomacy. He also conducted excavations on his own account in other places.

In 1855 he was relieved of his post at Baghdad and returned to England permanently. Almost immediately the Trustees of the British Museum applied to the Government for a special grant to fund the publication of lithographic reproductions of the cuneiform inscriptions in their collections under Rawlinson's editorship. In 1856 he was appointed a Crown Director of the East India Company. he also received a baronetcy. In 1858 he became MP for Reigate, but resigned after a few months to take up a seat on the newly-formed Council for India.

In 1859 Rawlinson was appointed Ambassador to Tehran, which involved his resigning his seat on the Council for India. He resigned from this position in 1860. in September 1862 he married Louisa Caroline Harcourt Seymour and in 1865 became MP for Frome. He held the seat until 1868 when he rejoined the Council for India, a post which he held to the end of his life.

His wife Louisa died in 1889 which seemed to have deeply affected Rawlinson. Concern for his father's well-being led to their son, Henry Seymour, resigning his post in India to continue his military career in England. Rawlinson died at the beginning of 1895.

Sir Henry Ellis was an English librarian and antiquarian. In 1798, Ellis was appointed as one of the two assistants in the Bodleian Library. He took the degree of B.C.L. in 1802. He was a Fellow of St John's till 1805. In 1800 he was appointed a temporary assistant in the library of the British Museum, and in 1805 he became assistant-keeper of printed books under William Beloe. Ellis moved to the manuscripts department in 1812, accepted the office of secretary to the museum in 1814, and in the same year became secretary to the Society of Antiquaries of London. Ellis became Principal Librarian in 1827. He was knighted in 1833.

Sir John Bowring was born in Exeter. His father was a wool merchant to China. As a young man he travelled extensively, becoming a partner in his father's company in 1818, selling herrings to Spain and France. He became editor of the Westminster Review in 1825 advocating free trade, parliamentary reform and popular schooling. In 1832 he was appointed to carry our investigations on accounting systems in the Netherlands and France to make recommendations to the British Government. In 1835 he became a MP and in 1845 became Chairman of the London and Blackwall Railway.

In 1849 Bowring was appointed British Consul at Canton (Guangzhou) and superintendent of trade in China. From 1852 to 1853, he acted as Britain's Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade and Governor of Hong Kong in the absence on leave of Sir George Bonham. Bowring was instrumental in the formation in 1855 of the Board of Inspectors established under the Qing Customs House.

The newly knighted Bowring received his appointment as Governor of Hong Kong and her Majesty's Plenipotentiary and Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China on 10 January 1854. He arrived in Hong Kong and was sworn in on 13 April 1854, in the midst of the Taiping Rebellion, remaining in Hong Kong until 1858.

John Fisher Turner was born in 1881, the son of a barrister. He was educated at Rugby and the Royal Marine Academy at Woolwich before being commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1900. He served in the North-west Frontier in 1908 and became the Chief Engineer of the Royal Air Force, India, from 1928-1931. He is remembered for his ingenuity in designing decoy sites in Britain during World War II. He died on 21 May 1958. He never married.

Sir Joseph Banks was born on 15th February 1743 in London into a wealthy land-owning family. He was educated at Harrow School and Eton College, where he became interested in botany. Between 1760 and 1763, Banks studied at Christ Church, Oxford, inheriting a considerable fortune after the death of his father in 1761. This wealth funded his travel to collect botanical specimens.

In 1772, Banks became Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1766 and its president from 1778 until his death in 1820. He was created a baronet in 1781 and appointed to the Order of the Bath in 1795. He died on 19th June 1820 in London.

Joseph Dalton Hooker, was born in Halesworth, Sussex, the second son of the botanist William Jackson Hooker. From the age of seven Hooker attended his father's lectures at Glasgow University. He was educated at Glasgow High school before studying medicine at Glasgow University. He graduated in 1839, entered the Naval Medical Service and joined polar explorer Captain James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition to the South Magnetic Pole (1839-1843) after receiving a commission as Assistant-Surgeon on HMS Erebus. in 1845 he took up the position of botanist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. He travelled to India and the Himalaya from 1847-1851. It is from this period that much of the correspondence in the archive belongs. He stayed with Hodgson during this period and would send him letters whilst he was travelling with Archibald Campbell (see BHH/3/1).

Hooker continued to travel including Palestine in 1860, Morocco in 1871 and the west of the United States in 1877.

In 1855 Hooker was appointed Assistant Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and he succeeded his father as Director in 1865. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and served as its President from 1873-1877.

Hooker married Frances Harriet Henslow in 1851 and they had four sons and three daughters, one of whom was named Brian Harvey Hodgson Hooker. Frances died in 1874 and Hooker remarried in 1876, Lady Hyacinth Jardine, and they had two sons. Hooker died at home in Berkshire on 10 December 1911 and was buried alongside his father at St. Anne's Church, Kew.