History
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The Minutes of the Society's first Annual General Meeting (AGM) are missing but we know from The Times of 15 June 1936 that it took place on 10 June 1936 at Lancaster House, then the home of the London Museum, that Lord Lamington was in the chair and that among those present were Lord Curzon's eldest daughter Lady Ravensdale, Sir Percy Sykes and Arthur Upham Pope. This was followed in November by the Inaugural Lecture, also at Lancaster House, delivered by the Agha Khan on Hafez and the Place of Iranian Culture in the World Today4. It was printed along with the names of the Society's first Officers and Council
Officers and Council Presidents
The Right Hon. Lord Lamington GCMG, GCIE
Honorary Presidents
H.E. The Iranian Minister to the Court of St. James
Vice Presidents
Hussein Ala CMG
Laurence Binyon CH
Council
Leigh Ashton
Alfred Bossom MP
N. S. Gulbenkian
E. H. Keeling MP
Laurence Lockhart PHD
Professor R A Nicholson LLD FBA
Professor D. Talbot-Rice
Sir E. Denison Ross CIE
Honorary Treasurer
E. Wilkinson, Hazelbury, Ascot.
Honorary Secretaries
Basil Gray
S. F. Shadman
Nicholson, Talbot-Rice and Denison Ross were academics and well known orientalists, as were Binyon and Gray, his son-in-law, both of the British Museum, and Leigh Ashton of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Bossom was an architect of international repute who had done work for the Iranian Government, while Nubar Gulbenkian was an Armenian oil millionaire attached to the Iranian Legation. Keeling had been Secretary-General of the 1931 Persian Exhibition. Lockhart was a scholarly member of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (AIOC, renamed British Petroleum/BP in 1954) and Wilkinson the recently retired Chief Manager of the Imperial Bank of Iran (the former Imperial Bank of Persia: renamed The British Bank of Iran and the Middle East in 1949 and then, in 1952, The British Bank of the Middle East/BBME).
Notes
4 It can be found on the Internet: www.iis.ac.uk then select 'learning'
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