In 1988 Robin Tavistock suffered a brain haemorrhage. His life was saved by prompt and highly skilled surgery, but he was left for many months with a severe disturbance of his speech known as aphasia. With support from his family and the help of intensive speech therapy, he slowly began to recover, but always experienced difficulty accessing the words he needed or wanted to use.

Robin’s experience left him in no doubt about the difference that continual speech and language therapy made. He also became aware of the lack of help available to sufferers of aphasia in this country. A shortage of funds within the NHS means that speech and language therapists in hospitals tend to be diverted to life threatening conditions, and much of their time is taken up with swallowing difficulties.

Robin founded 'The Tavistock Trust for Aphasia’; to try and ensure that more people could have access to the quality of treatment he received. He called it the 'Tavistock Trust for Aphasia' because Tavistock was his surname at the time. When his father died in October 2002 he became the 14th Duke of Bedford.

As the only grant-making trust in the United Kingdom that focuses solely on aphasia, we aim:

• to work towards making effective therapy available to all who have aphasia and support for families
• to encourage and facilitate creative research