Originally published on Twitter on 15 December 2022.
Anglickáwas built in its current form between 1867 and 1878.
Historically, there was a highway (if that’s the term) leading from Žitná brána (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/02/27/prague-2-day-36-zitna/) to the then village of Vršovice.
From 1878, it was named Palackého after František Palacký, figurehead of the Czech National Revival. It then became Anglická in 1926 (a quick reminder of how this happened: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/12/23/prague-2-day-1-italska/).
In the most on-the-nose renaming of all time, the Nazi occupiers renamed it Irská – Irish Street – from 1940 to 1945.
England is a country that shares borders with Scotland and Wales, with which it forms the island of Great Britain, which is located in the North Atlan… no, sorry, I’m not doing this.
Let’s jump straight to English people of Czech origin, then.
These are alphabetical by first name, and I’ve surely missed out many important ones – feel free to add your own.
Actor Harry Lloyd – known for his role as Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones – was a descendant, on his mother’s side, of Ignaz Moscheles, a pianist and composer born in Prague in 1794 and whose son, Felix, was a painter, peace activist and promoter of Esperanto.
Alf Dubs, Baron Dubs, Labour MP from 1979 to 1987, was born in Prague in 1932. He was one of the 669 children rescued by the Kindertransport, organised by Nicholas Winton and others, in 1939. Unlike many, he was able to join his parents in the UK.
(just pointing out I’ve already broken the alphabetical order so that you don’t have to point it out yourself)
Comedian and writer Helen Lederer was born in Wales in 1954 to an English mother and a Czech-Jewish father. He, Arnošt Lederer, had been born in Teplice in 1926: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/9261753/Helen-Lederer-My-cousin-the-survivor.html
We briefly touched upon actress Helena Bonham Carter’s Czech-Jewish origins on her mother’s side here: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/12/24/prague-2-day-6-helenska/
Jan Pinkava, director of the animated films Geri’s Game and Ratatouille – both of which won Oscars – was born in Prague in 1963, but his family emigrated to the UK six years later:
John Tusa, presenter of BBC 2’s Newsnight from 1980 to 1986, managing director of the BBC World Service from 1986 to 1993, and managing director of the Barbican Centre from 1995 to 2007, was born as Jan Tůša in Zlín in 1936, emigrating in 1939.
Jovanka Houska, who was the British Women’s Chess Champion nine times between 2008 and 2019, was born in South London, but her grandfather was part Czech.
Karel Reisz, a filmmaker best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), a classic of kitchen-sink realism, was born in Ostrava in 1932, and was also rescued in 1939 by Nicholas Winton.
Mike Sarne, singer of the somewhat horrific 1962 hit with Wendy Richard (AKA Pauline off Eastenders), Come Outside, was born in London in 1940 to parents who had fled to the UK from Břeclav in 1938:
I think he remains the only Czech to have a had number 1 hit in the UK, but am obviously always hoping for this to change.
Petr Torák, born in Liberec in 1981, applied for asylum in the UK in 1999. In 2006, he started working as a police officer in Peterborough.
He has an MBE for services to the Roma community.
As stated here by his partner, Emma Freud, Richard Curtis, director of all those Hugh Grant or Renée Zellweger-starring romcoms, and co-founder of Comic Relief, is the son of a Czechoslovakian refugee who moved to Australia as a teenager:
Actor Tom Hollander – very recently seen in The White Lotus (WATCH IT) was born in Bristol in 1967 to a father who came from a Czech Jewish background, but who converted to Catholicism.
He, his sister and his father collaborated with BBC Radio 3 on a documentary about his father’s escape in 1939: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5tDSTqRDXlNHgkCQHsNCFmw/saving-the-hollanders
Playwright Tom Stoppard was born Tomáš Sträussler in Zlín in 1937, where his father worked for Baťa. The family fled to Singapore on 15 March 1939 – the day the Nazis took over.
His father died trying to flee Singapore in 1942; his mother, Martha Becková, married an army major, Kenneth Stoppard, in 1945, and the family moved to England a year later.
What's in a Prague street name 
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