In the course of my Anniversary Address last year I welcomed the appointment of Professor Donald Strong as our new Secretary. We were all looking forward with confidence to his succession, for he had, as I then put it, exactly the qualities and the experience to fill the post with distinction. His sudden death in Turkey on 21 September last extinguished these hopes before he had the time to make the happy impact on the Society's affairs which we were all expecting. His loss has been universally mourned both professionally and personally by his very extensive circle of colleagues and friends, but it will be felt nowhere more acutely than in this room, where so much in the conduct of our business has always depended on the occupant of the Secretary's chair. We have been very fortunate in persuading Dr. Ian Longworth, Keeper of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities in the British Museum, to take this vacant seat, and we look forward to the reinforcement which his presence there will provide both generally and in handling those concerns of prehistoric archaeology which are his main field of professional interest.