‘Liberation’ – that was the suggested theme of this year’s BCSA writing competition. It was prompted by 2025 seeing the 80th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War. Our entrants brought us much ingenious writing (they always do), and you’ll be able to read some of the best entries in the Review over the next year. The worldwide nature of the internet is such that we had entries this year from as far afield as the USA, Nigeria and Benin. And it was very good to see several BCSA members taking part in 2025.
Our winner was Bernadette Malvern. She is a retired head teacher from Stoke-on-Trent. Her entry is called “Czechoslovakia – twenty years before liberation but the rest of the world was with you”. It is a memoir of when she was part of the British Cycling Team competing in the Cycling World Championships in 1969. This happened to be held in Brno on the first anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, and at which the Soviet team was among the favourites to win medals. You can read it here
The second prize is called “On the train to Prague: Sebald’s Austerlitz and British-Czech identity”. It is by Dr Katie Low. In it she tells us about a visit to the Czech Republic in which she found out much about her Czech forebears, who had escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1939, and she compares herself with the character Austerlitz in the amazing novel of that name by W G Sebald. In that novel, as the years pass, the mysterious Austerlitz comes to discover more and more about his identity.
Katie Low grew up in the south of England and studied Classics at the University of Oxford, where she was a lecturer and director of studies. In 2015 she moved to Brussels, where she spent a number of years working for the EU, on topics ranging from energy to quantum technologies and sustainable aviation.