British Institute of Florence - Directors

Directors

The first three directors drew no salary and were therefore styled Honorary Directors:

Harold Goad’s predilection for Benito Mussolini’s New Italy damaged the Institute’s reputation in the 1930s (he wrote a number of apologies for Fascism and the Corporate State). Its reputation was restored under the musicologist Francis Toye, who was fortunate on his return after the war to find that the Library had been preserved intact: this was partly due to the dedication of the librarian Giulietta Fermi and to the protection of the Swiss Consulate. Toye was replaced in 1958 by Ian Greenlees, who had worked for the British Council and Rome and had many contacts among the Italian Left dating from his wartime experience at Radio Bari, which he founded in order to broadcast Allied propaganda. His portrait in the uniform of a Major in the British army was painted by his friend Renato Guttuso. Greenlees and his librarian Robin Chanter greatly expanded the Library. When the lease on the Palazzo Lanfredini expired in the mid-1960s, Greenlees’s friend Harold Acton made available three floors of the Palazzo Lanfredini, on the south side of the river, to house the Library. There was not however enough room for the teaching operation, and in 1964 the School was moved to the Palazzo Spini-Ferroni, in piazza Santa Trinita. Among those who served on the Board of Governors was the art historian and former spy Anthony Blunt. David Rundle, appointed director in 1981, had a background in the British Council and made contacts with the Foreign Office, whereas the Italianist Frank Woodhouse from Cambridge University established closer ties with British academic life. In 1996 the School was moved again, this time to the Palazzo dello Strozzino in piazza Strozzi. Courses of English and Italian, as well as History of Art, are given. The Institute is an authorised centre for the University of Cambridge ESOL examinations. Sara Milne became director in March 2011.