British scientists and clinicians played foundational roles in the modern study of ageing and have made major contributions to understanding its evolution, biology and treatment. Initially they worked closely with their counterparts in the United States through the trans-Atlantic “Club for Ageing” founded by Vladimir Korenchevsky and Vincent Cowdrey. Yet, in contrast to the American experience of sustained government funding for ageing research from the 1970s onwards British national attempts to established research momentum in this area were described in 2005 by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee as a “series of ill-thought-out initiatives which have long titles, short lives, vague terms of reference, little infrastructure, and no sense of purpose”. Almost two decades after this the same committee noted “a lack of effort since our report in 2005 to ensure research into ageing … is properly funded, co-ordinated and included within the remit of particular research councils. This may have contributed to the poor translation of basic research into clinical trials or new medicines”. As the promise of gerotherapeutics becomes undeniable and countries around the world consider how best to create or consolidate their own gerontological research bases a comparison of these divergent British and American experiences is potentially useful for policy makers. What did the Americans do right? Why did the British fail? Can general lessons be drawn? What should be done today? Drawing predominantly on the ‘grey literature’, especially for the period from 1995 onwards this Chapter attempts to answer these questions and draw general conclusions concerning the best approaches to creating an effective research and translational base for modern geroscience.