History
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Both the 1936 and 1949 Rules expressed the Society's interest in Iranian students in the U.K., a matter of considerable concern for the Iranian Embassy who were keen that the Society should find a permanent home which would also serve as a club for the students. Eventually, with financial help from the Iranian Ministry of Education, the AIOC and others including Nubar Gulbenkian, premises were found and furnished in 1948 at 42 Connaught Square near Marble Arch on the top two floors of a private house owned by a Colonel and Mrs. Humphrey Butler at a rent of £500 p.a. Students, on arrival in the U.K., were given a leaflet by the British Council encouraging them to join the Society at the modest annual fee of ten shillings. Many seem to have done so. To help deal with them Lt. Colonel E. H. Gastrell, an Indian Political who had also been Consul-General in Mashad, and Dr. Mahmoud Sanai, Cultural Attaché at the Iranian Embassy were co-opted as Assistant Hon. Secretaries. However, though No. 42 was equipped with both a billiard and tennis table and Iranian newspapers students made little use of it, preferring to go their own ways. In 1950 only six of the one hundred and twenty invited to a special reception for them turned up! Membership of the Society had, however, grown from 119 in 1945 to 300 in 1950, a third of them Iranians.
Prompted by the Iranian Embassy the Society searched for a more central, larger and attractive (for the students) building in which it was planned to allocate two rooms for the Iranian Government's "Curator for Students". Unable to find affordable new premises the Society abandoned the search in February 1951. Shortly afterwards the souring of Anglo-Iranian relations following Dr. Mossadeq's nationalisation of the oil industry resulted in the Iranian Government withholding its annual grant of £500, causing the AIOC to follow suit with their own grant of the same amount. The consequent financial problems caused the Society to give up its lease of Connaught Square in September 1951. Since that time it has had no home of its own and been dependent on arrangements made with other institutions such as the Overseas League, the English Speaking Union and since 1986 the Middle East Association, 33 Bury Street, SW1, for lecture and reception rooms, while for many years the Royal Society for Asian Affairs has, for an annual fee, befriended the Society by providing it with secretarial assistance and a registered address at 2 Belgrave Square, SW1.
The library, launched in 1943, never really got going before 42 Connaught Square was abandoned. It then contained about 150 books, most of them in Persian given by the Iranian Ministry of Education. A deluxe edition of Upham Pope's six volume A Survey of Persian Art, presented by Lady Ravensdale, considered too precious for open shelves, was placed in Basil Gray's care at the British Museum. An interesting collection of ninety-five books from the library of A. C. Edwards7 given in his memory by his son, came after the closure and went into store with the rest. More than twenty years later the Society gave the entire collection to Wadham College, Oxford in whose Persian Library it is now housed.
Notes
7 1951 Author of A Persian Caravan (1928): The Persian Carpet (1953). He had spent many years in Iran with O.C.M. Ltd
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