I am Robert Andrew Brown and the Chair of the Society. I in effect got the position by default. The membership was ageing.  The Society to a certain extent had lost direction. I offered to try and take it forward. There was much debate about a new web site but not much  progress. I eventually said I would fund the web site  my self.

There is an existing Committee the key members of which are in touch, but beyond my efforts the society appears in stasis.  The  President  who is key to  these decisions, including if the Society should continue in its current from, has been bound up in other matters, and trying to get  even basic administration completed,  such as a new bank mandate, has taken years.

It is currently unclear in what form the society will continue, or if I will have to start again. I have spent 3 years trying to get past these hurdles with limited progress, and feel that the web site ( which I initiated and funded myself) is of sufficient value as an information source that it should go live, even if questions about the shape of the future society remain unresolved at the current time.

Had I not in the interim over those years, personally funded all expenses, including the cost a new web site, and my own expenses in continuing to promote the society, it is likely the Society  would no longer exist, and just perhaps that was the wish of someone some-where.

I wonder if and to what extent the way forward is hobbled by the fact I have an ongoing court case to view the will  of  Princess Margaret, in which I am claiming I may be an illegitimate child of Princess Margaret, and people would rather I did not achieve anything of note, because that would go against the perception that some may wish to hold or portray that I am some sort of ill-informed trouble making miscreant.

As above currently and for about the last three years I have financed the society’s limited expenses (but not insignificant amounts were I to add them all up), and any of my own related expenses  including the development of this new web site, out of my personal taxed income. I believe the foresight and research of Sir Robert both has value in a modern world, and should continue to be honored. Without my input it was very clear the Society had no way forward and was not going to survive.

The Society has limited remaining funds, I would estimate about £7000, that pending a new committee are in effect frozen (and have been for 3 years), and under the custody of the President, but it has proved very difficult to get consensus on the way forward, a new committee, etc.

The Scottish branch had decided to wind itself up. It was largely excellently run by Cedric DeVoile who wished to have more time in his later retirement for other things, and volunteers were not clamoring to take over his role.

People are leading increasingly individualised lives; access to media has hugely changed, and lives have become more pressured, so it is more difficult to find people with free time willing to help. That is compounded as the Society is in a degree of organisational disarray.  I suspect that but for my determination to keep it going it would have in effect become defunct.

The organisation continues to function as a charity, but due to administrational issues is no longer registered,  and no longer needs to be at present, as  any historic membership  income  into the  account under the control of the President is small.   For the reasons above the Society will not be seeking any contribution from members at the current time until the way forward is clear, and the status of the society regularised, or a new one created.

I will continue to pay to have this web site maintained as an information source, and meet  my own expenses when I attend meetings in the name of the Society.

Sir Robert is remembered in India as the founder of the National Institute of Nutrition.

With thanks for your interest and support through your visits and promtion  of this web resource.

Robert Brown

Historic Officers included –

Michael Crawford (President)(link)

Robert Brown (Chair)(link)

Simon House (former Chair)(link)

David Marsh (Press officer and former newsletter editor)(link)

Marvyn Bramble (link)

Antonella Sansone (link)