Joyce Westrip was born in southern India in 1929, moved to England in 1947, and from 1955 lived in Perth, Western Australia, where she completed her education at the University of Western Australia. Indian history and culture hold her fascinated, and she regularly visits the subcontinent to continue her research. She has the largest known collection of books on Indian cooking including rare and out of print cookbooks. She has presented radio and television programs on Indian culture and cooking and regularly gives talks and classes on the subject. She is the author of Moghul Cooking: India's courtly cuisine, Fire and Spice: Parsi cookery, and An ABC of Indian Food. Joyce was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2000 for her work promoting cultural links between Australia and India.
Peggy Holroyde was born in England in 1924, but has become a global citizen spending four years in the USA at Radcliffe College Harvard 1941-1945 with a degree in English Literature and Fine Arts. There she found her mentor, H.N. Spalding who created the Spalding Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University in 1936. She studied Hindu and Buddhist faiths under Dr S. Radhakrishnan at Oxford in 1946-1948. In 1953 she joined her BBC Representative husband in India where she spent five years.
During that time she travelled the sub-continent extensively and has returned innumerable times. She has lectured on Indian history and cultural attitudes at various educational institutions in the UK, as well as Australia where she has lived since accompanying her husband on his academic appointment in 1976. She is a Member of the Order of Australia after administering various Indian Ocean Festivals in Australia.
She is the author of Indian Music, East Comes West, Social Change Amongst Asian Families in England and An ABC of Indian Culture.