About Us
 

British Czech and Slovak Association

About the BCSA

The BCSA was launched by Alexander Dubcek in November 1990 and has been a registered British charity since 1995.

The BCSA raises public awareness in Britain of Czech and Slovak life in all its aspects: history, arts, literature, economies, politics and sciences.

BCSA Executive Committee

Honorary officers

Chairman: Sir Michael Burton KCVO, CMG

Vice-chairman: Ruzena Holub bcsa @bcsa .co .uk

Honorary Treasurer: Douglas Gibb treasurer @bcsa .co .uk

Honorary Secretary: Blanka Shrimpton secretary @bcsa .co .uk

Elected members

Michael Ivory, Events Coordinator

Edward Peacock, Competition Organiser prize @bcsa .co .uk

Angela Spindler-Brown, BCSA Review Editor

Co-opted members

Zuzana Slobodova-Nepil

One vacancy

Non-executive Officers

President: Ladislav Hornan

Vice-president: Graham Melville-Mason

Chairman's report for 2010

have great pleasure in once again giving an account of the Association’s activities over the past year.

Our membership was stable at 319 members but it was gratifying that 22 of these were new members. These came mainly through visiting our regular ‘Get to Know You” evenings. Other members joined through personal recommendations or our website.

We have at present 4 Corporate Members (Maestro Travel, Merkuria Energy UK Ltd., G.Modiano, Britannia Connections Ltd.), 10 Overseas Members (6 in Czech Rep., 2 in France and 1 each in Poland and Belgium) and 6 Students.

We would like to thank all members for paying by standing order (it saves us money and time as chasing for payment takes up a lot of time) and particularly those who changed their payment method to a standing order. This is very helpful for us to keep the cost down especially when our subscription rates have not changed for several years.

We appreciate your continued support and are grateful to all extra donations which we have received.

The BCSA Review, which is published six times a year, continued to be a central part of our activities. The magazine has now an established group of correspondents, specialists in their fields, whose contributions help make the Review’s coverage of British Czech and Slovak affairs varied, informed and interesting. However the Review editors always seek and welcome new correspondents.

Turning to our Events Programme during 2010, it began on the evening of 21 January, when a large audience crowded into the Czech Embassy to hear Dr Jan Čulík of the University of Glasgow deliver a survey of the major works of Karel Čapek, 2010 being the 120th anniversary of the writer’s birth. The subsequent question and answer session allowed the lecturer plenty of latitude in discussing aspects of Čapek’s life as well as his work. A highlight was the showing of an extract from the film of “White Plague”, while the event was admirably chaired by BCSA member Marian Werner, whose initiative it had been.

On 11 February, also in the Czech Embassy, a sizeable group gathered to listen to Matej Lejsal describe in detail the activities of the Domov Sue Ryder in the Czech Republic in the context of the country’s ageing population. This event had been planned for some time and was attended by a number of members of the Foundation’s local staff , among them Ben Simms, who acted as the most genial of chairmen.

The Czech Embassy again served as venue for the next well-attended event, when, on 25 March, Professor Robert Evans of the University of Oxford delivered a fascinating and well-illustrated account of the life of Emperor Rudolph II, on whom he is an international authority. The BCSA was very pleased that the newly appointed Ambassador, Dr Michael Žantovský, was able to attend.

The Association’s Annual General Meeting on 15 April, also at the Czech Embassy, was followed by a lengthy tasting of quality Moravian wines generously provided and cheerfully presided over by Jiří Stibůrek, an entrepreneur from Benešov u Prahy, aided by Robert Dubravec. Open to the public, the tasting attracted a considerable number of people, and may possibly have induced a few more of our members to attend the AGM!

Our Annual Garden Party took place on the afternoon of 19 June. More than 200 people came to the communal gardens of the Czech and Slovak Embassies to enjoy this high point of our calendar. The weather was kind enough not to shower us with rain so that we could spend most of the time outdoors, listening to the live music provided by a Slovak Gypsy Band of Jan Telvak. More entertainment was delivered by the group Karpaty whose musicians and dancers brought splashes of bright colour to the gardens with their national costumes.

The buffet prepared by Jan Pulpan, chef of the Czech Embassy, contributed to the relaxed and merry atmosphere of the afternoon as well as the barbeque, although this time, lamentably, without the usual Czech sausages! The sausages will certainly make their appearance again next time! Pilsner Urquell offered their beer for the party, which was warmly welcomed and the beer was certainly enjoyed by the guests, substituted by other beer brands when it ran out.

There was also an informative corner of the London Kids’Art Club, a book stall with a large selection of books for sale and a raffle draw with plenty of tempting prizes.

We would like to thank the Czech and Slovak Ambassadors for allowing us to hold the party and their staff for all the help provided. Their continuous support is very much appreciated. We also thank Britannia Connections Ltd. for the main raffle prize, as well as other raffle contributors and all the helpers on the day.

The long run of events taking place at the Czech Embassy came to an end in the autumn with the beginning of the long-expected reconstruction of the premises. On 23 September, hospitality was extended by the Slovak Embassy for the first autumn event, a most authoritative talk by our former committee member Jana Burešová entitled “The Czech Refugee Trust Fund in Britain 1938-1950”. A version of the talk had already been delivered in 2008 to a London University conference, following which there was a demand for it to be repeated to a wider audience. As had been expected, numbers attending almost exceeded the capacity of the seating, and the talk was very well received, as was a personal and moving reminiscence by our senior member Hedy Fromings.

On 25 October, the capacity of the venue was again almost exceeded, when a lecture room at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies was filled for a “round table”, jointly organised with SSEES, on the outcome of this year’s Czech and Slovak general elections. The subject was dealt with respectively by Tim Haughton of the University of Birmingham and Karen Henderson of the University of Leicester, with SSEES’s Sean Hanley in the chair, and was followed by a lively discussion, with many pertinent issues being raised by BCSA members and students.

Another collaborative event took place on 13 November, this time at Riverside Studios Hammersmith, a venue used by the Association for the first time. Our partners for a showing of Jan Hřebejk’s film of Aleš Březina’s opera “Zitra se bude… – Tomorrow there will be…” were the Dvořák Society and the Czech Centre. On this occasion, the spacious venue was only partly filled by the sixty or so who attended what was after all a paying event, but all seem to have appreciated, not only the masterly film of the operatic treatment of the 1950 show trial and execution of the democratic politician Milada Horáková, but also the lively presence of its librettist, Jiří Nekvasil, who was interviewed after the showing by Graham Melville-Mason. This event also owed its genesis to Marian Werner, who had felt most strongly that we should mark the 60th anniversary of Horáková’s trial. The showing of Hřebejk’s film turned out to be entirely appropriate in this respect, though other alternatives were explored and only failed because of our inability to find an authoritative speaker without the need for interpretation.

The final event of the year was our Annual Dinner. This took place on 26 November at our usual venue, the Radisson Edwardian Bloomsbury Street Hotel. After a slow start to the bookings, in the end the number of guests attending was a pleasing 185 guests. It was very nice to see some familiar faces who attend regularly as well as some who participated for the first time. It was also very encouraging to see so many young people from the Czech and Slovak professional community living and working in Britain.

HE Michael Žantovský, Czech Ambassador in London, delivered an excellent after dinner speech. HE Juraj Zervan, Slovak Ambassador in London, also attended.

The evening started with a pre-dinner drinks reception with beer kindly donated by BudweiserBudvar UK and wine provided by Stanislav Mádl from Velké Bílovice, Morava. Before dinner the guests were treated to some classical music charmingly performed by ‘My wood wind Trio’ .

The excellent raffle prizes included 3 nights half board accommodation for two in Hotel Centrální Lázně in Mariánské Lázně with spa treatments donated by Danubius Hotels Group; a painting donated by Zanet Belasicova, a young Slovak artist, living and working in London who recently graduated from illustration at the University of Westminster; Dinner for two with wine at the Czechoslovak Bar Restaurant in West Hampstead donated by Mrs Ivana Veruzábová; Tatratea, special 100% natural liqueur donated by Karloff, s.r.o.; Remoska donated by Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines; Tickets for the London Bike Show donated by Škoda and Model of the classic Czech car TATRA 603 donated by Maria Hughes; and others.

The raffle raised just over £900. The BCSA would like to thank all contributors for their continued support of this event as well as our guests who attend the dinner regularly and make it a success.

On average about 12-15 people attend our, ‘Get to know you’ evenings at the Czechoslovak National House in West Hampstead, which have now been running for five years. All are welcome to attend and we would welcome any suggestions for events from our members. We would also welcome offers of help with some of the administrative tasks involved with running our Association or practical help at our Summer Garden Party.

The school receiving BCSA support for its English teaching programme this year was in Kosice in Slovakia.

Three writers – all women, and all members of the Association – won prizes in our writing competition in 2010.

Long-standing member Jitka Jenkins won our first prize of £300 with A Night with the Vixen. This consists of the musings of a man of 70 as he listens in London to Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen. He thinks back to an idyllic visit to Olomouc in 1962, and remembers a meeting with a woman who was lovely but out of reach.

Two second prizes (of £100) were awarded this year. One went to Frances Jackson. She wrote Letter from Moravia, some wry observations on what it is like to be a young woman on a student exchange at Masaryk University in Brno. The other was won by Gerta Vrbová. She won with Our First International Meeting in Prague. This is a moving memoir that tells not only of a physiology conference held in Prague in 1956 but also of her own first meeting with her British husband, against the background of the restrictions imposed by the Communist régime. Gerta’s story, and that of her remarkable escape from Czechoslovakia in 1958, can be read at greater length in her new book Betrayed Generation (subtitled ‘Shattered hopes and disillusion in post war Czechoslovakia’).

All three winning entries have appeared in the Review. Entries are now invited for the 2011 competition which must be in by 30 June.

Our website had 10,000 visitors in the last year. Not surprisingly most of these came from Britain (7,316), the Czech republic (828) and Slovakia (527). The Links page is the most popular (5,700 hits). There is a BCSA group on Facebook with over 480 members. The wall is used by members to pass on news of interest to others, usually events. Members have posted 106 photos to the album. We use Facebook to promote our events. We are also using Twitter where we broadcast news of events etc, usually by retweeting other people’s news. Recent BCSA tweets are shown on our website so that there is often something new to see there.

In conclusion let me once again thank the committee for their hard work on your behalf and the two Embassies for their hospitality for our meetings – especially on this occasion the Slovak embassy for this evening – and for their unstinting support.

Sir Michael Burton, Chairman, April 2011

Treasurer's Report for 2010

The BCSA finances remain strong. The financial results for 2010 showed a surplus of £739 which increased the BCSA assets from £58,965 to £59,704. Total income in 2010 was £20,390 and expenditure in the same period was £19,651.

Largest income items

Subscriptions and members’ donations amounted to £6,112 and formed 30% of BCSA gross income, the same percentage as last year. The garden party and the annual dinner continued to be important fundraising events for the BCSA and raised £1,838. The grant of £2,248 from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs helped to fund the BCS Review.

The Gift Aid scheme for Charities enabled the BCSA to reclaim tax of £682 from HM Revenue and Customs. The recent fall in gift aid recoverable from 28% to 25% will not significantly affect the results for 2011 as most subscriptions are received in January. However, there will be a slight reduction in 2012 and I would urge anyone who is a UK taxpayer to sign a gift aid donation form if they have not already done so.

Interest received was earned at 2.5% on the £50,000 deposited with Santander in December 2009. This has now been rolled over for a further year at base rate, currently 0.5%, plus 2.25%.

Most significant items of expenditure

The BCSA continued to fulfil its main objective of deepening British, Czech and Slovak relations and carried on with its support to elementary schools in the Czech and Slovak Republics to improve the tuition of the English language. A grant of £1,500 was awarded to a Zakladna Skola in Kosice.

The publishing costs of the BCS Review were £5,028. The expenditure on the regular events programme was £1,682. The cost of the popular writing competition organized and funded solely from BCSA funds was £633.

Governance costs remained very low and amounted to £126 due to the fact that all Executive Committee members are volunteers, and do not claim expenses, and also because the independent examiners of the BCSA Accounts work on a semi-honorary basis, for which the BCSA is most grateful.

Approval of accounts

The BCSA accounts were approved by the Executive Committee at its meeting on 6 January 2011 and have been made available in the AGM papers. Moore & Smalley LLP, Chartered Accountants, once again carried out an independent examination of the accounts.

Finally, I would like to thank all members, patrons and volunteers for supporting the BCSA’s activities. My particular thanks are due to the Czech and Slovak Embassies for their kind permission to provide their premises for BCSA events.

Douglas Gibb, Honorary Treasurer, April 2011



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Last updated 15 January 2012. Copyright British Czech and Slovak Association. Registered charity 1049411
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