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Sir Jonathan Marsden gave a talk at the Embassy of the Czech Republic on Tuesday 14th May 2019, entertaining the guests with stories from behind the scenes of the Royal Sculpture Collection. He presented some of the lessons learned from working on a catalogue raisonné of European sculpture in the Royal Collection to be published by...
FRIENDS' LECTURE: BRITAIN AND BOHEMIA IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY On 5th March 2019 Dr. Mark Whelan, an historian of late medieval and early modern Germany and Central Europe who is currently working at King’s College, London, gave a lecture explaining how and why the English kings and senior clerics became involved in the early-fifteenth-century stru...
On 10th November 2018 'Magazín Práva', a supplement in the Czech national newspaper 'Pravo', featured this year's working party organised by The Friends at the Chateau of Vizovice. The article is by Zuzana Musálková, with excerpts below translated from the Czech by Rupert Emery. "The fact that foreigners admire our cultural monuments – and moreover...
The project that we undertook at the Château of Vizovice in the week 8 - 15 September consisted of taking down an unstable brick boundary wall in the park, which had been rebuilt before the Velvet Revolution. It was set on a stone base, which had also collapsed in places. We cleaned all the bricks ready for reuse and rebuilt sections of the stone b...
A CELEBRATION OF CZECHOSLOVAK CULTURE IN WARTIME BRITAIN On 9th October 2018 Dr. Jana Burešová of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies at the University of London gave a talk at the Czech Embassy on the ways in which both Czech and German-speaking exiles from Czechoslovakia during the Second World War acted to promote knowledge...
On 8th January 2019 the art historian Caroline Cannon-Brookes gave a fascinating lecture in the Czech Embassy, London, about the life of Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand II (1529- 1595) and the collections amassed by him. Born the second son of the future Emperor Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia, he was Regent of Bohemia for twenty years in the middle of...
The full extent of this project became apparent only as the work proceeded. We knew we were to clean out a disused mill and our combined team of Czech and UK volunteers spent a week clearing dirt and rubbish, which had lain undisturbed since the mill was last used in 1957. There was a tragic tale as the last miller was arrested and imprisoned by th...
There was local publicity in Žďár nad Sázavou about our recent working party in June. The front cover of this newpaper has the caption 'The British on their knees. They're fixing monuments'.
On Thursday 7th June 2018 after we met in the morning in the Marmaris Café, Chris Sumner, a landscape historian, took us on a guided tour of the Well Hall Pleasaunce opposite the café. Well Hall Pleasaunce was opened as a public garden jn 1933 and contains a rectangular moated island, the site of the long-demolished Well Hall, home in the 1520s of ...
Organised by The Friends, this was a unique opportunity to visit top historic sites in Bohemia and to meet the experts who look after them. Specialists from the NPÚ, the Czech National Heritage Institute, and others - accompanied us to Strahov Abbey, the Palace Gardens below Prague Castle, Konopiště Castle, the Château of Krásný Dvůr, Karlštejn Cas...
