The organisation was set up in 1934 to promote a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom abroad, to promote the knowledge of the English language, and to develop closer cultural relations between the United Kingdom and other countries.

Some of the people we have helped at the start of their careers are:

			British sculptor Henry Moore, whose work was included in many British Council art exhibitions from the 1940s onwards
			Argentine scientist Cesar Millstein, who studied in the UK on a British Council scholarship in the 1970s, and won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1984
			British musician and artist Genesis P Orridge whose controversial show Prostitution was toured by the British Council in 1976 and later became recognised as a formative influence on Punk Rock
			British artists Gilbert and George, whose work we exhibited overseas as part of our art collection
			Australian film director Baz Lurhmann, who we brought to the UK in the 1990s to visit the Glyndebourne Opera Festival