History
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The Society bravely kept going during the first three years of World War II. Sadly, Minutes of AGM's between 1938-46 and Council meetings between October 1943 and November 1945 are non-existent or missing but we know from the Proceedings that a full lecture programme continued at least until the autumn of 1943. Miss (later Professor) A. K. S. Lambton, briefly home on leave from Tehran where she was Press Attaché at the British Legation, lectured on Persia on 8 September 1943 at a joint meeting with the Royal Central Asia Society chaired by Sir Percy Sykes. Two weeks later she was followed by Dr. S. F. Shadman on A Review of Anglo-Persian Relations 1798-1815, based on a thesis that had won him a University of London doctorate.
With no premises of its own the Society was able, thanks to Hussein Ala and his successors, to use the Iranian Legation as its base until 1943 with lectures taking place at the Courtauld Institute, Royal Asiatic Society, Overseas House and elsewhere. In March 1943 the Society rented for £40 p.a. one of the Royal Asiatic Society's rooms at 74, Grosvenor Street along with the use of its library and lecture room, at the same time deciding to establish its own library "in all languages dealing with Iran since the promulgation of the Constitution of 1906". There the Society remained until 1948 when, as related below, it found a home of its own.
The war was barely over when the Society organised a reception for Iranian delegates and journalists attending the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Education and Cultural Assembly (UNESCO) in London, followed a few days later in early December 1945 by a poorly attended lecture on Persian Education by the Iranian Minister of Education, Dr. Ali Ashgar Hekmat. The next lecture on record, Persian Cultural Relations with the West was given in June 1947 by Dr. Isa Sadiq, Hekmat's successor at the Ministry of Education. Thereafter lectures were given regularly until 1953 when all activity was temporarily suspended.
Inevitably there were a number of changes after the war. There were problems in finding a new President, Lord Lamington having died in 1940. Both Sir Percy Loraine and the Marquess of Zetland (the former Lord Ronaldshay of the old Persia Committee) declined the honour before it was accepted by the Hon. Harold Nicolson who had been born in Tehran and served there as Counsellor at the Legation under Loraine in 1925-27. He proved a good choice, regularly attending meetings of the Council where he early on stressed the need for more Iranian members to avoid the Society "becoming too exclusively a society of English people interested in Iran".
With the departure from London of the Iranian Ambassador Hassan Taqizadeh, who had served as Chairman from 1941-47 a replacement had to be found. His successor, Mohsen Raïs, seems to have been unwilling to do so and more often than not was represented at Council meetings by one of his staff. Thus in 1948 Major-General W. A. K. Fraser, a retired Indian Army officer who had served in Iran in both World Wars, was elected Chairman. He was succeeded two years later by Sir Giles Squire, an Indian Political who had been both Consul-General in Mashad and Counsellor in Tehran.
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