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Thomas Manning was born in Broome, Norfolk on 8th November, 1772, the second son of Reverend William Manning, rector of Brome and subsequently rector of Diss, Norfolk, and his wife, Elizabeth, the only child of Reverend William Adams, rector of Rollersby Norfolk.

Thomas Manning was educated locally and was admitted to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1790 to study mathematics. Here he made some lifelong friends including Charles Lamb (1775-1834). Manning was very able but did not graduate as he refused to sign the oath of allegiance to the Church of England. Manning continued in Cambridge coaching students and published his Introduction to Arithmetic and Algebra (1796-1798)

Manning became interested in China and the Chinese language and in January 1802, sailed from Dover to stay in Paris where he met and studied with Dr Hagar at the Bibliotheque Nationale. Manning intended to stay in Paris for two years but was detained further due to the Napoleonic conflict with England. He returned to England in late 1804 and studied medicine for 6 months at Westminster Hospital with the intent of gaining an useful skill for his travels.

Manning first thought of trying to reach China overland via Russia but felt that his language skills were insufficient and therefore applied to the East India Company to travel on board one of their boats. He sailed on the Thames in May 1806 arriving in Canton, China, later that year.

Manning lived within the East India Company factory and helped with medical matters and translation. He was frustrated by lack of access to interior China. He joined an expedition to Cochinchina (Vietnam) in 1808. This expedition failed and Manning returned to Canton.

Manning then decided to attempt to reach the interior of China via Tibet. For this purpose he sailed on the Pellen to Bengal. He became known in Calcutta for his flowing beard and native costume. He waited for official permission to travel through Bhutan but in the end set off with one Chinese servant entering Bhutan in September 1811 and Tibet later that year.He travelled with Chinese soldiers and treated their medical ailments. He reached Lhasa in December 1811 and was allowed an audience with the Dalai Lama. However he was not able to continue further inland and was sent back to Calcutta in 1812. From there he returned to Canton where he continued his studies until joining the unsuccessful Amherst Embassy in 1816, after which he set off for England with the Embassy on the Alceste. This was wrecked on 17 February 1817 and he continued on the Caesar. He reached St Helena in July 1817 and was given an audience with Napoleon who was imprisoned on the island.

Manning returned and settled in England. He lived in Italy, wanting to improve his spoken Italian, between 1827-1829. He returned to England and continued to live in Kent until 1838, when after a stroke which disabled his right hand, he moved to Bath to gain better medical attention. He died at Bath on 2 May, 1840 and was buried in Bath Abbey Church.

Alexandre Anastasius Pallis was born on 20 October 1883 in Mumbai. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, and subsequently worked for the Egyptian Civil Service. He became a Greek citizen and was both Governor of Corfu and Salonika. During World War II he was attached to the Greek government in exile. He died in Athens, Greece, on 26 June 1975.

Adam Clarke was a Wesleyan minister and theologian, serving three times as the President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference. Born in Ireland, he became a Methodist in 1778 and a minister in 1782, firstly in Bradford (Wiltshire). He also served in the Channel Islands, Cornwall, Ireland, rural Lancashire, and the Shetlands (where he was the effective planter of Methodism in the 1820s). He was a keen theologian with progressive views linking rationalism with spirituality. As a scholar, he studied a variety of subjects including folk tales, and romances, as well as Persian, Arabic, Ethiopian, Hindu, Coptic and Sanskrit texts, and subjects including alchemy and the occult, witchcraft, medical curiosities, astronomy, mineralogy, and conchology, while maintaining an overriding interest in the classics and the scriptures. He was involved in the conversion of 2 Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka.

He was elected a member of several learned including the British and Foreign Bible Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the Geological Society of London, the American Historical Institute, and was a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society. Clarke died from an attack of cholera on 26 August 1832.

Angus C. Graham was born in 1919, in Penarth, Wales, and was educated in Penarth and Shropshire before attending Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he attained a BA in Theology in 1940. He served in the Royal Air Force during WWII, taking a Services Japanese course at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 1944-45 which led to him acting as a Japanese interpreter in Malaya and Thailand from 1945-46. Graham attained a BA Hons Chinese from SOAS in 1949 and became a Chinese translator attached to the Malayan police in Penang from 1949-1950.

Graham took up his first academic post in 1950 as a Lecturer in Classical Chinese at SOAS completing his PhD thesis in 1953. He became a Reader in 1966, Professor of Classical Chinese in 1971 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1981. During this period he also was a Visiting Fellow of Hong Kong University (1954-55), Consulting editor of "Foundations of Language" (commencing 1964), a Visiting Professor at University of Michigan (1970) and a Fellow of the Society of Humanities, Cornell University (1972-73).

Graham's research focused mainly around Chinese and western philosophy. He was concerned with the relations between philosophical concepts and the structure of the Chinese language. He published many books and articles connected to his research. He was also interested in poetry and short story writing and translation of early Chinese poetry.

Graham was appointed Emeritus Professor of Classical Chinese at SOAS in 1984. Post-retirement from SOAS he held a number of visiting appointments including at the Institute of East Asian Philosophies, Singapore, Faculty of Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, Brown University, Rhode Island, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Graham died on 26 March 1991.