The writings of Indians in English provide a rich ground to explore the ways in which travellers and migrants from India to England relate to the realities of the place and to their place in it. Language and the literary education that characterised English education in India during colonial times play an important role in the construction of identity of such Indians. The love and idealisation of an "imagined" England constructed from literary texts, and the encounter with reality upon travel to England, are depicted in many fictional and autobiographical accounts. Focusing on a sample of such texts from the 1950s to the 1970s, this paper looks at representations of the first-hand experience of England for those who identify themselves with Englishness on the strength of their intellectual and emotional connection with it through love for the language and literature. The study yields interesting insights that may have implications for current movements of people across the globalised world, with shared language and education as their "intellectual" passport and a confident sense of identity and belonging with the West and its culture, based on "familiarity" acquired through a shared language and images derived from ubiquitous media sources.