As a charity registered in the United Kingdom (no. 800617) the Trust is governed by a Board of Trustees. Responsibility for the day-to-running of the Trust’s affairs and management of its properties is delegated to the Director and Co-ordinator.

Trustees:

Stephen Stuart-Smith (Chairman – appointed 15 December 2016). Stephen Stuart-Smith has been Director of the literary publisher Enitharmon Press since 1987 and in 2001 founded Enitharmon Editions as a specialist publisher of artists’ books. He has degrees in Medieval and Modern History and in English and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the English Association. His friendship with Robert Anderson dates back to 1974, when he joined Dr Anderson’s Barts Choir. More recently he was a member of the London Philharmonic Choir.

Adrian Berendt. After a career in banking in the City and in Central Europe, Adrian now has what some refer to as a portfolio of interests. He is finance director for a charity that provides training and learning to young people that need support to get into the labour market.  He also runs an opera company in Tunbridge Wells which specialises in performing “intimate opera in interesting settings”.  The company is focussed on introducing opera to new audiences and to promoting young opera singers.  Other interests include campaigning for road safety and for promoting walking and cycling as an alternative to private car use for short journeys.  Most importantly of all, Adrian and his wife, Louise have four children, all at varying stages of education and work.

Adrian’s original connection with Robert was, like so many others, through Barts Choral Society, where he unwisely let slip that he was an accountant.  Naturally Robert pounced and asked Adrian to be Treasurer, a role which he performed for three years.  He has been a Trustee since 2001.

Elizabeth Gray. Elizabeth Gray was one of Robert Anderson’s godchildren and as such she grew up with a happy interest in Egyptology, and a life-changing love of music. After an Art Foundation and Degree in Scientific Illustration, Liz worked for natural history and medical publishers in the UK and USA before embarking on a four-year voluntary post as Expedition Artist for Raleigh International in Belize, Chile, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Since 1999, Liz has qualified as a Mountain Leader and worked for several expedition and service programme organisations leading and planning overseas trips for students and adults. These have led to adventures all over the world from Mongolia to Peru; Namibia to Nepal and everywhere in between. Liz now works part-time for Earthwatch Europe as a Risk Advisor, combining this with a consultancy career that sees her running travel safety courses for fieldwork students at Oxford, Roehampton and Bath Spa Universities; providing travel safety and risk consultancy to schools and organisations around the world and most recently providing COVID-Safe protocols for TV production companies. Thanks to Robert Anderson, Liz first performed in the Royal Albert Hall at the age of 11, and since then has sung and toured with Bath Bach Choir, Voces de Camino and The Handful, as well as playing viola with New Bristol Sinfonia.

Independent Examiner: Charles Osborn ACA.

Charles Osborn is a tax director with a top 25 accountancy practice in London. As a newly qualified A.C.A., he joined Barts Choir in 1982 and took part in the concert tours which Dr Anderson led to Holland (1985) and Cologne (1987). When Robert founded the Trust in 1988, Charles was delighted to assist with related accounting matters and then to act as its Independent Examiner. Having met his future wife, Penny, during the tour to Cologne, they now enjoy the tours to Europe each July with The Leconfield Singers, as well as their other concert performances in/near Petworth, West Sussex.

Director: Chris Naunton

Dr Chris Naunton is an Egyptologist, writer and broadcaster and has been Director of the Trust since 2016. He has extensive prior experience of the running of not-for-profit organisations having been Director (CEO) of the Egypt Exploration Society (2012-16), President of the International Association of Egyptologists (2015-19), and a company director of the British Egyptian Society (2013 – present). Chris is the author of Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt (2018) and Egyptologists’ Notebooks (2020), and he frequently appears on television and radio as an expert on ancient Egypt. He was a friend of the Founder, Dr Anderson, whom he met through their mutual association with the EES. Chris’s tribute to Dr Anderson was published in Egyptian Archaeology magazine shortly after Dr Anderson’s death in 2015 and is available here. Further information about Chris’s Egyptological work is available on his website.

Co-ordinator: Howard Davies

Friend and executor of the Founder, and long resident in our Highgate house, Howard Davies has been associated with the Trust since its inception, first as a founding Trustee, then as Administrator of the Trust during the Founder’s lifetime. After reading law at Cambridge, and a period engaged in productions of mediaeval drama and travels in the Middle East, he has made his career in book publishing, now limiting himself to the publication – often under his own imprint – of works of personal interest. He is currently engaged in preparing for press the remaining writings of the Founder, the second volume of whose Collected Reviews, Set Your Heart on Books, is due out in the autumn.

To contact any of the individuals above please refer to the information and online form here.