Sir John Barrow (1764-1848) was a distinguished British government diplomat whose career took him to China and Africa, and who in forty years as Secretary to the Admiralty was responsible for promoting Arctic and Antarctic exploration. A close friend of Sir Joseph Banks, he served on the Council of the Royal Society and as President of the Royal Geographical Society. Sketches of the Royal Society and Royal Society Club was published posthumously in 1849, as a supplement to Barrow's autobiography (also published in this series). It consists of a brief history of the societies, followed by a series of memoirs of presidents of the Royal Society of Barrow's time, and of other leading members of the Society and the Royal Society Club, the elite dining club associated with it. The biographies provide abundant evidence of the central importance of the Royal Society to scientific life in nineteenth-century Britain.