Discovering a New Country – that was the suggested (but not compulsory) theme of this year’s BCSA writing competition. It was prompted by the 100th anniversary of the publication of Karel Čapek’s Letters from England (Anglické listy). Our themes are suggestions, they’re not compulsory. It was gratifying to see so many BCSA members taking part in 2024.
The theme was interpreted in very different ways. For example, one entry was prompted by Karel Čapek’s saying that “If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people”. This led to an account of how an English family adapted to life in the Czech Republic – complete with the usual British astonishment at seeing a carp swimming in their host’s bath on Christmas Eve.
Anglické listy featured in another entry, mostly set in England in 1974, when Czech refugees from 1968 are visited by the narrator’s father and brother – and there’s a twist in the tail in Part II when a family secret comes to light 50 years later in 2024.
The winning entry by Julian Wilde is called Walking Proudly in his Footsteps. It is the text of a talk about Karel Čapek given to a class at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies in London – given by a Czech student who comes from the same village as Čapek. You can read it here.
The second prize entry by Ivan Margolius concerns something quite different – the life and work of Paul Jaray, an engineer of Czech descent who pioneered streamlining in the design of cars a hundred years ago.