Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the Oxford mathematician who wrote under the name Lewis Carroll, is the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He was born in 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, the son of a clergyman, and grew up in a large family that he entertained with games and home magazines. At Christ Church, Oxford, he taught mathematics but found the undergraduate life bleak and felt more at home with the Liddell children. The story is said to have been told on a rowing trip on 4 July 1862, when Alice Liddell was ten. Dodgson later wrote out the story as a handwritten book for her. He was private and complex, and the story's lasting fame has overshadowed much of his life.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.