By Barbora Orlická and Tomáš Varga

It all began in 1965 in a small village called Cikháj when a nice lady from Scotland got an idea. She was none other than Jessie Kocmanová.  Jessie arrived in Czechoslovakia after 1945 with her husband, a Czech airman Vincenc Kocman. She became a member of the Department of English and American Studies and she was also involved in a theatre production at the British Council in Brno in 1947. After it closed down in 1948, she turned her attention elsewhere. Eventually, her interest in theatre found its practical outlet during one of the intensive English weeks in Cikháj where she decided to chase away boredom with the very first production of the Gypsywood Players (although the name was adopted only a year later). “So on the spot she just decided let’s do a play. So she picked out a five or six actors and found a text of some kind and they put on this play there,” recalls Don Sparling. As it turned out, it was the most remarkable thing she could have done.  Keep Reading

By Tereza Pavlíková and Blanka Šustrová

The Department of English and American Studies (KAA) has been here for more than 95 years. Following the establishment of the university in 1919, it was one of the founding departments of the Faculty of Arts. However, finding out the precise day of the founding of the English Department has proven to be a task more complicated than we imagined. There are no official records accessible. This we learned after checking a number of webpages, the whole Faculty of Arts library, and underneath the KAA couch. Failing in this task miserably, we decided to pay a visit to Don Sparling, who became a member of staff in 1977, to interview him in the hope that he would tell us where we could access the information we were so desperately seeking. Keep Reading

By Tereza Pavlíková, Martina Krénová, Markéta Šonková, Blanka Šustrová

As we are writing these articles, almost 4 months have passed since Scotland’s independence referendum (or Indyref, as it is sometimes adoringly nicknamed) took place. The heated discussion and strong emotions have cooled down and it has become possible to look at the referendum from a bigger distance. Which we did, and doing this, were trying to see the bigger picture. How was the situation leading up to it? How was the voting and what was it that swinged the scales in favour of Better Together? What are the outcomes? Are the promises being fulfilled and are Scottish people still interested in getting more independent? These were just some of the questions we asked ourselves and attempted to find answers for. Keep Reading