The evolution of Oriental Studies in Britain over the last century is traced in thirteen essays on key figures (twelve of them Fellows of the British Academy). They exemplify the outstanding contribution of British scholars to Oriental scholarship, within the general trend in the West to understand and interpret the civilisations of the East sympathetically. With important changes of methodology and approach to the cultures and religions of Asia, the twentieth century has been an exciting and fruitful period for Oriental Studies in Britain.

• Editor's Introduction


• Harold Walter Bailey


• Alfred Felix Landon Beeston


• Edward Granville Browne


• Gerard Leslie Makins Clauson


• Godfrey Rolles Driver


• Samuel Rolles Driver


• Alan Henderson Gardiner


• Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb


• Francis Llewellyn Griffith


• Vladimir Fed'orovich Minorsky


• Ralph Lilley Turner


• Arthur David Waley


• Richard Olaf Winstedt