Our twenty seventh annual dinner will be held on Friday 23 November in the heart of Bloomsbury. This highlight in the BCSA calendar is a wonderful opportunity for Slovaks, Czechs and Britons to mingle in a convivial atmosphere, to meet old friends and make new ones. Members and non-members alike will be made welcome at a drinks reception including Czech Budweiser Budvar lager, enjoy a three-course dinner with wine, hear our speaker and the results of our annual writing competition.…

THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT Keen to learn something about the Czechs but too afraid to ask? This one-man show performed in English by Czech actor Tomas Vanek explains some of the cultural pitfalls from the Czech point of view. Beer, knedliky, Karel Gott and the Czech fashion for wearing socks with sandals are just a few topics that are touched upon. The BCSA is delighted that the Royal Theatre and Club Chic in Vinohrady, Prague has agreed to…

Ladislav Feierabend managed the impossible: he was a member of the war-time Protectorate government and at the same time head of a resistance group in contact with Edvard Beneš in London. So when a messenger was captured and forced to reveal everything, in January 1940 Feierabend embarked on an escape worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. He eventually joined Beneš’s government-in-exile as finance minister before returning to Prague in 1945. After the communist coup in February 1948, Feierabend went into hiding…

Susan Jenkinson will describe work at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in the team concerned with Prisoners of Conscience in Czechoslovakia (CSSR) in the 1980s. Julia Sherwood, who was also at the International Secretariat at that time, but in another team, will outline the case of her father, Prisoner of Conscience, Jan Ladislav Kalina, imprisoned in Slovakia 1972-73. Free admission for members of the BCSA, £10 for non-members, full-time students £5. Registration is necessary for all on Eventbrite (see…

Born in Slovakia, Andrea Kmecova is a versatile pianist who entered the National Conservatoire of Music in Košice at the age of fourteen. She continued her musical studies at the Bratislava Academy of Music and Drama (VSMU) and then at Trinity College in London. Free admission for members of the BCSA, £10 for non-members, full-time students £5. Registration is necessary for all on Eventbrite (see link below) or by e-mail to bcsa@bcsa.co.uk

The AGM is open to current BCSA members only. The agenda will include the chairman and treasurer’s reports for 2018, the election of officers and members of the executive committee and proposed amendments to the constitution. Please register your attendance by email to secretary@bcsa.co.uk by 4 April

Representatives of the younger generation will share how they built a life and career in their new home. Zdenek Kudr is a co-founder of Bohem Brewery which brews traditional Bohemian lagers in north London where he has lived for more than eight years. Before that he drove trucks across Europe and played guitar as a hobby which led to the formation of a band. Peter Krajnak is UK country director at Slido, a Slovak technology company that built an interaction…

And how does the very recent Slovak election of the country’s first female president, liberal lawyer Zuzana Caputová, contrast with the outcome of the Czech presidential elections? These provocative questions are going to be tackled by Dr Karen Henderson, former Senior lecturer in Politics at the University of Leicester, who will travel specially from Slovakia (where she now lives and lectures at the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava and Comenius University in Bratislava) and Dr Sean Hanley…