In November 1934, as lecturer in English in the University of Coimbra, Portugal, I initiated an appeal for funds to equip an Institute of English Studies (Instituto Ingles) in the Faculty of Letters there.  The support of the British Committee for Relations with Other Countries was forthcoming in February 1935, and in one sense the association of the British Council may be said to date from then.  The Instituto Ingles was, after several unavoidable postponements, inaugurated in June 1936, and after the Long Vacation I returned to Britain and took up an appointment as Head of the Portuguese Department in the University of London, King's College.

The Instituto Ingles was, however, an institution integrated in the University of Coimbra and not under the aegis of the British Council.  I understand that the British Embassy in Lisbon represented to the British Foreign Office the desirability of creating an 'independent' British Institute in Portugal which, while maintaining relations with Portuguese universities, could promote Anglo-Portuguese cultural relations on a wider scale and with the country as a whole.

The Foreign Office (Rex Leeper, News Department) approved and asked the British Council (Colonel Bridge and Kenneth Johnstone) to include among its priorities the establishment of a British Institute in Lisbon.  In the summer of 1937 I was invited by the Council (Lord Eustace Percy and Colonel Bridge) to proceed to Lisbon and organise such an Institute.  The Principal of King's College agreed to my being seconded for two years for this purpose, and I arrived in Lisbon on 1 January 1938.

At that time there were only two 'independent' British Institutes in existence with a comparable range of activities, namely the British Institute in Florence and the British Institute in Paris (excluding the specialist British Institutes or Schools of Archaeology in Athens, Cairo and Turkey).

The Institute was officially inaugurated on 22 November 1938 by the Portuguese Minister of National Education in the presence of the British Ambassador and of Lord Lloyd, the Chairman of the British Council.