Stephen Helmsley Longrigg was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, and educated at Highgate School and Oriel College, Oxford. He served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in the First World War before returning to Oxford to complete his Masters degree. He then joined the British Administration in Iraq and served as Inspector-General of Revenue between 1927 and 1931. It was during this time that he wrote "Four Centuries of Modern Iraq" (1925), a history of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire. In 1937 he joined the Iraq Petroleum Company in which he continued to work until his retirement in 1951, apart from serving in the Army in the Middle East during World War Two. He was an able linguist which a good knowledge of tribal affairs. He wrote widely about his time in the Middle East.
Nora Elisabeth Mary Boyce was born in India in 1920. She graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge with a double first. She joined the faculty of the Royal Holloway College, University of London in 1944, where she taught Anglo-Saxon literature and archaeology until 1946. Simultaneously she continued her studies, this time in Persian languages, under the guidance of Vladimir Minorsky at the School of Oriental and African Studies from 1945 to 1947. There she met Walter Bruno Henning, under whose tutelage she began to study Middle Iranian languages. In 1948, Boyce was appointed lecturer of Iranian Studies at SOAS, specialising in Manichaean, Zoroastrian Middle Persian and Parthian texts. In 1952, she was awarded a doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge. At SOAS, she was promoted to Reader (1958–1961) and subsequently awarded the University of London's professorship in Iranian Studies following Henning's transfer to the University of California at Berkeley. Boyce remained professor at SOAS until her retirement in 1982, continuing as Professor Emerita and a professorial research associate until her death in 2006. Her speciality remained the religions of speakers of Eastern Iranian languages, in particular Manichaeanism and Zoroastrianism.
Hugh Trevor Lambrick was an Indian civil administrator serving in Sindh from 1927-1947. On returning to England, he became a historian and a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, where he served from 1951 to 1971. He, with Walter Fairservis, is known for his archaeological research at Mohenjodaro.
William George Archer studied history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Hindi, Indian history and law at the School of Oriental Studies (SOAS). He subsequently served in the Indian Civil Service from 1931 until around 1947, when India gained independence. After returning to England, Archer served as Keeper of the Indian Section, at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1949-1959 and subsequently as Keeper Emeritas. He wrote many books under the name, W. G. Archer.