Czechoslovakia was headline news in 1938/39, yet little was known about its cultural heritage. Patriotic exiles in Britain determined to remedy this through multi-faceted entities such as the Czechoslovak Institute, graced by Queen Elizabeth, Queen consort, who attended an exhibition of Wenceslaus Hollar’s engravings.

Dr Jana Barbora Buresova is a committee member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies at the University of London. In addition to post-doctoral research, she is actively involved in the Association of Jewish Refugees Audio-Visual Testimony Archive project. Her key areas of interest are political exiles past and present, particularly Czechoslovak women in exile, on which she has spoken and contributed to a number of publications

Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595) was Regent of Bohemia for twenty years in the middle of the 16^th century. Born the second son of the future Emperor Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia, he was highly educated and a cultivated humanist who established a sophisticated court in Prague which embraced both the Habsburgs and the Czech nobility.

Caroline Cannon-Brookes is an art-historian, trained at the Courtauld Institute, and teaches at the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education. She has led many tours to the Czech Republic to which she is a regular visitor.