We were set up 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

The British Council appears in a lot of novels.  Some of the best-known are:

Rates of Exchange by Malcolm Bradbury

Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell

The Magus by John Fowles

The Third Man by Graham Greene

Small World by David Lodge

The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

We also appear in a couple of films, including a rather caricatured version of us in the 1958 comedy 'Carlton-Browne of the F.O.'.