Skip to main content

The Friends of Czech Heritage: keeping you informed about our activities

You can click on the envelope icon on the right beneath this text to subscribe to our activities listing.

For events and news from other organisations please click here, where we feature a broad range of Czech-related items on Facebook, regularly updated.

Talk by Sir John Tusa on 8th April 2025 in the Czech Embassy, London

JiricnaNickArcherMBurtonTusa cTSommerladSMALL

'A Life in Bat'a Modernism - Straight Lines, Flat Roofs & Planned Communities' Sir John Tusa's talk on the life and work at Bata's factories and communities in Zlín in Moravia and East Tilbury in England attracted a full house. Sir John's father ran the factory  in East Tilbury. The audience included two former UK ambassadors to the Czech ...

Continue reading
  48 Hits
Tags:

ZOOM TALK 19.05.25: The Runciman Mission & the Race to Save Europe in 1938

RuncimanBook

The British Czech & Slovak Association Jointly with The Friends of Czech Heritage ON ZOOM from 18.30 - 19.30 on Monday 19th May 2025 As Europe faces yet another major crisis only 80 years after World War Two and confronts the threat of war while latter-day dictators set the terms of peace in Ukraine, it is timely to revisit the role and aim of ...

Continue reading
  126 Hits
Tags:

SPRING OUTING 24.05.25: Hampstead, Belsize Park and the Modern Movement


Saturday 24th May, 2025. Meet at Hampstead Underground Station at 10.30am. The walk from Hampstead to Belsize Park is a rich mixture of architecture from the late Regency to the 20th century, home to writers, artists, architects, refugees and spies. We visit a classic 1930s building, 2 Willow Road, wander down Keats Grove to the edge of Belsize Par...

Continue reading
  138 Hits
Tags:

SUMMER OUTING 17.07.25: Kelmscott Manor and Rodmarton Manor

KelmscottGraphicCutDown copy

Kelmscott Manor is a limestone manor house in the Cotswolds village of Kelmscott, in West Oxfordshire, southern England. It dates from around 1570, with a late 17th-century wing, and is listed Grade I. Kelmscott Manor was the country home of the writer, designer and socialist William Morris from 1871 until his death in 1896. Rodmarton Manor is a la...

Continue reading
  104 Hits
Tags:

LECTURE 08.04.25: A Life in Bat'a Modernism: Straight Lines, Flat Roofs & Planned Communities

Bata HousingWider cTBataFound CCa

A Talk by Sir John Tusa on Tuesday 8th April 2025, 6.30pm, in the Embassy of the Czech Republic, 26-30 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 4QY. Sir John Tusa was born in Zlín. Two days before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, John’s father flew out of Czechoslovakia on a Bat'a company plane via Poland, Yugoslavia and France...

Continue reading
  316 Hits
Tags:

OUR PATRON RECEIVES THE HIGHEST CZECH ORDER

Vladislavský sál 28 10 24

Architect Eva Jiřičná has been awarded the highest honour bestowed by the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion At a ceremony in the Vladislav Hall of Prague Castle marking Czech Independence Day last week, on October 28th 2024, hosted by Czech President Petr Pavel, the London-based architect was among more than 50 people decorated for outsta...

Continue reading
  331 Hits
Tags:

LECTURE 28.01.25 - COURIER: MY LIFE AS A SPY IN COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA

01 25 CornwallImageSquare SMALL

The talk by Professor Mark Cornwall, on 28th January 2025, in the Embassy of the Czech Republic, London W8 4QY, was extremely popular. He explored the subject of secret police surveillance in communist Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. Prof. Cornwall drew on his own surveillance file, asking why, when and where he was being followed and assessed by the ...

Continue reading
  449 Hits
Tags:

LECTURE 08.10.24: THE CZECH CONNECTION

081024 2 cFoCH WEB

Edward Peacock writes: "Congratulations to The Friends of Czech Heritage and Caroline Cannon-Brookes for such an interesting talk last night, illustrating historic links between Britain and Bohemia over the centuries. We saw the Bohemian Queen of England, Richard II’s wife Anne; we tried to reform the Church with Wycliffe and Hus; we went sightseei...

Continue reading
  842 Hits
Tags:

The Restoration of the Château Aided by The Friends

379px Coudenhove Kalergi 1926

Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi is recognised as one of the founders of the Pan European movement in the inter-war period and whose influence can be seen in the founding of the European Union. His family château at Poběžovice is steadily being restored from its ruinous state by the local municipality and The Friends have given a grant towards the conser...

Continue reading
  413 Hits
Tags:

Working Party in Brněnec in September 2024

BrnenecSchindler cMiaowMiaow CC

Brněnec is a village in the Pardubice Region. The Low-Beer family founded a textile-producing company here more than 200 years ago. The factory was confiscated after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany in 1938 and in 1944 Oskar Schindler took it over. What happened next was the basis for Schindler's Ark, the historical novel by Thomas ...

Continue reading
  681 Hits
Tags: