The plans put in place to modernise the Society continue to be put into effect. The new meetings venue, the Warburg Institute, is a success and makes for a less formal but equally comfortable space for lectures. Our sister Society the British Numismatic Society already meets here, so it has been good to share the venue. Our shared library is in the same building and it is a gain for those using the library to stay on site for the meeting. We appreciate the way in which the Warburg staff make us feel welcome. We are also continuing to hold occasional meetings at the British Museum. Next month we have a new venture as we have joined the British Numismatic Society in organising their annual summer meeting. The first joint meeting will be in York. The structure of some of our meetings has also been changed and we have now held two ‘seminar’ meetings inviting two or three scholars to lead discussion with short presentations. These were on Buddhism and Coinage and on the Ancient Economy. Lively discussions followed the presentations at both meetings. We also returned to a long-standing tradition of the Society, which had lapsed in recent decades, by welcoming members to take the floor and show the meeting some recent discovery or acquisition.

Council has also completed the process of rewriting the Societies byelaws and once they have been given the all clear by the Privy Council’s office they will be put to the Society for approval at a General Meeting so that they can then be endorsed by the Privy Council. The Society’s new website is also now up and running at www.numismatics.org.uk, but still requires some work to enable all Fellows to consult the joint RNS-BNS Library catalogue on line. Our task for the next year is to create more visibility for the Society and to increase membership and participation. I would like to thank my colleagues on Council, especially John Morcom, Katie Eagleton and Vesta Curtis, for pushing these changes ahead and particular thanks to Dan Pett of the Portable Antiquities Scheme for the hard work he has done on the website.

The year’s programme of meetings has once again provided Fellows with a rich and varied diet, with papers ranging geographically from Britain to India, chronologically from the Hellenistic period down to the nineteenth century and covering many aspects of numismatic method. Once again the quality of the presentations was very high and Fellows experienced the wide diversity of numismatic research currently in progress. Particularly pleasing was the success of the ‘Show and Tell’ open invitation evening for Fellows to present brief topics. Eight excellent presentations were made, some by Fellows who had not given a public presentation before.

At our Xmas meeting we started a new custom which we hope to maintain, when we invited Professor Peter Spufford, our medallist for the year to receive his medal and then give the Society a lecture. By separating the medal presentation from the AGM we have been able to pay more attention to the event, hear a lecture from the recipient and continue the celebration at our traditional Xmas party. It was a very successful event and our medallist for 2006 has already agreed to join us at this year’s Xmas meeting. I have great pleasure in announcing that our medallist for 2006 is François Thierry, curator of East Asian coins at the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. François has been working in Paris on Chinese and Vietnamese coins since the 1980s. He has been a pioneer in a field which has been sadly neglected in the West, creating the first serious academic publications on these subjects in a Western language since Wang Yuquan’s 1951 volume on the American Numismatic Society’s early Chinese collection and Schroeder’s 1902 study of Vietnamese coins. His engagement with the numismatic community in China has played a significant part in introducing them to western scholarship. I look forward presenting him with the Society’s medal in December and hearing his presentation. Our programme for next year is almost complete and looks to be as varied and interesting as last years.

During the last year the Society has also been active in promoting and rewarding numismatic scholarship, giving £7,500 out in grants. The Linecar Fund continues to support the annual meetings of the British Association of Numismatic Societies. Awards from the Martin Price Memorial Fund were given to Iossif Panagiottis for work on Seleucid coins and to Richard Hobbs for his study of coins found in the Pompeii excavations. Awards from the Nicholas Lowick Memorial Fund were given to Eurydice Georgiantelli towards the cost of a conference session on the Golden Horde at this year’s Byzantine Studies Conference in London, to Arianna d’Ottone towards her cataloguing of a collection of Islamic coins in Rome, to Susmita Basu-Majumdar for her project on digitising Indian punch-marked coins and Roman Kovalev for his study of Islamic hoards in northern Europe. Awards from the Neil Kreitman Endowment Fund were given to David Jongeward to support his work on a catalogue of Kushan coins in the American Numismatic Society and to John Perkins for his work on the Masson collection of coins from ancient Afghanistan. We also gave a grant of £500 from the Marshall Memorial Fund to Huseyn Coker, a student in Turkey, so that he could buy books on Greek coins. No grants were given this year from the Broome Fund and Chand A&Z Fund.

This year’s Lhotka Prize was presented to David Hartill of Cambridge for his catalogue of Cast Chinese Coins, the first useable reference listing of traditional Chinese coins to be published in English since Frederick Schjoth’s volume in 1929. The Lhotka Prize is given to the book in English most useful for the novice numismatist and David’s manual provides everything a novice student or collector could need on Chinese coins.

The Society’s programme of publications continues, with another outstanding volume of the Numismatic Chronicle, dedicated to the memory of our former Honorary Fellow Kenneth Jenkins (1918-2005). Thanks to the continued hard work of our editors Richard Ashton and Marcus Phillips, it was once again published on time and more than 500 pages crammed full of good things. It arrives just before Xmas like a well stuffed stocking. Richard has also overseen with his customary skill another Special Publication W. Seaby and S. Ireland A Catalogue of Ancient Coins in the Cabinet of Sir Roger Newdigate of Arbury Hall, Warwickshire: a Grand Tour Collection in Warwickshire Museum, with several others fast approaching publication.

The fellowship of the Society appears to have dropped as our secret have been rationalising the continued inclusion of non-payers in our fellowship lists, but numbers actual remains at a stable level with a balance of Fellows joining and departing,. We are delighted to have been able to elect to Honorary Fellowship our former President Harold Mattingly. Harold has played a major part in the academic study of Greek coinage during his career and into his retirement. Many young scholars have been inspired to use numismatics in their approach to Greek history by his publications and his teachings. We congratulate him on this honour.

Sadly six of our Fellows have died during the year and among them two of our most eminent Fellows: our Honorary Fellows, Medallists and former Presidents Philip Grierson (1910-2006), a fellow since 1945, and Robert Carson (1918-2006), a fellow since 1947. Both stand out for their unique contributions to twentieth century numismatics. Philip Grierson began his career as medieval historian, but soon changed his focus to numismatics, holding chairs in the subject at both Cambridge and Brussels. His work has transformed the study of the monetary systems of the medieval period and will continue to do so through his publications and his students, now eminent scholars themselves. Robert Carson’s contribution to numismatics was as a curator, working in the British Museum. He continued the development of the British Museum’s Roman coin collection and its catalogue series and carried numismatics to new audiences through his popular publications. Both men inspired a new generation of scholars who owe their introduction to the subject to these two great numismatists. We are also sad to have lost another widely respected numismatist, Elizabeth Pirie (1932-2005), a fellow since 1957, an important player in the study of early English coinage, focussing much of her attention on the styca coinages of Northumbria, with several publications on the subject which remain standard references for many years to come. We also report the loss of three other ordinary fellows, K.S.V. Chu, a collector from Hong Kong and a fellow since 1997, A .Lilburn, a British collector and a fellow since 1983 and J.H. Remick, a Canadian collector and author on British Empire coins, a fellow since 1969.

I am very grateful to my colleagues on the Council for their support and encouragement through the year, particularly in helping rewrite the Society’s byelaws. My particular thanks to all the Society’s officer, our Treasurer John Morcom and our Secretaries Katie Eagleton and Vesta Curtis, whose steadfast roles enable the Society’s day to day business to proceed without hitch. I am also very grateful to Tony Merson and Barrie Cook our auditors who play and important on-going role in supporting our financial arrangements. Our editors Richard Ashton and Marcus Phillips continue to do their hard work to a high standard and are appreciated for their sound judgement and appropriate sense of urgency. I also wish to thank our Tony Holmes, our Librarian and those who assist him. Tony has the double role of managing the Library on behalf of this and our sister Society and does an admirable job balancing the demands of both. Our assistant Secretary Henry Lythe continues to provide the Secretaries and Society with much appreciated support. I would also like to thanks our departing Council members Marion Archibald, Ian Leins, Peter Preston Morley and Jonathan Williams for their service to the Society.