What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 17 December 2022.

Londýnská was built in 1875.

From 1875 to 1884, this was Tunelová, named after the tunnel under the street, connecting the main train station with the one in Nusle.

Then it became Hálkova until 1926, after Vítězslav Hálek (1835-74), a poet, writer and journalist who was one of the key figures of the May School.

From 1940 to 1945, the street was named Mnichovská, after Munich. In a clear case of occupiers sucking (yet again), they didn’t even have the foresight to call it Dublinská (see https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/03/02/prague-2-day-39-anglicka/).

Back to the current name… Wow, writing about Anglická two days ago has really screwed me over for coming up with material today, hasn’t it. But let’s throw some random facts out and see what sticks.

We covered two 17th-century Czech residents of London in the Prague 3 series – Václav Hollar (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/02/28/prague-3-day-163-hollarovo-namesti/) and Jan Amos Komenský (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/26/prague-3-day-82-komenskeho-namesti/).

During World War II, London hosted the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, more correctly known as the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee (Výbor Československého Národního Osvobození).

František Moravec, the head of the country’s military intelligence, coordinated resistance activity, having managed to smuggle intelligence files from Prague to Croydon Airport on 14 March 1939, the day before the Nazi occupation started.

The Czech Embassy building in London, built by a Czech team, could… well, bring a little more joy than it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_Czech_Republic,_London#/media/File:Czech_Embassy_London_01965.JPG

The Czech Centre isn’t a stunner, either, but its programme is reliably awesome: https://london.czechcentres.cz/en/program

Bohemia House in West Hampstead is a very good place to go for some proper Czech grub and beer: https://bohemiahouse.london/beginning-of-national-house/, especially when it’s July 2016 and you’ve just told your friends and family that you’re moving back to Prague.

The London Eye is a six-country creation; one of those countries is the Czech Republic, as the iron spindle and hub were cast here by Škoda.

The wheel was only ever meant to be temporary; I regularly hope that somebody will announce, one day, that the same is true of Brexit.

And here’s the Queen having a jolly old peak round Old Town Square in 1996:

While Charles and Di also popped over in 1991:

I’m a Londoner of sorts. I lived there until I was six, and again from 2008 to 2016 (following my first stint in Prague).

I can’t imagine swapping Prague for London – or for anywhere, really – again.

But my 8.5 years as an adult in London gave me a level of self-confidence and a feeling that it was OK to be myself that I hadn’t particularly had until that point, and I’ll always be grateful for that.