In 1952 she decided to leave Czechoslovakia
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Bohuslava Bradbrooková, née Nečasová, was born on March 1ř, 1922 in a family of teachers in Valašské Meziříčí. Her father, a grammar school professor, died soon after, so she grew up alone with her mother and older brother. In 1941 she graduated from the teachers’ institute in Valašské Meziříčí. As the colleges were closed during the Nazi occupation, she worked as a teacher in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm until the end of the war. Partisans fought in the Beskydy Mountains in the vicinity, and she experienced the liberation of her hometown by the Red Army, whose soldiers committed violence against the population. After the war, she enrolled in Czech and English at Charles University in Prague. She experienced the rise of the Communists to power at the faculty in the form of ideological vetting, including the firing of professors. She managed to complete her studies, but when she turned down a teaching job in the borderlands and wanted to stay in Prague, she had to earn a living as a tutor. In 1952 she decided to leave Czechoslovakia. She and a friend from her studies managed to cross the border into southern Moravia and stayed for almost a year in various Austrian refugee camps (Vienna, Innsbruck, Linz). It was not until 1953 that Bohuslava Bradbrooková and her friends gradually made their way to the then difficult-to-get-to England. Bohuslava was helped by a short-term scholarship in Cambridge. She taught at a grammar school in Dublin, Ireland, and after marrying an Englishman, Bradbrook, she lived in Wales. She taught English at the University of Bangor in Wales (1965-1982) and, after her husband’s death, at the University of Cambridge (1983-2005). In 1966, together with several academic friends, mostly Czechs, she founded the British branch of the Czechoslovak Society for Arts and Sciences (SVU) in London. She published several books on Czech literature and writers. Her monograph on Karel Čapek is highly regarded. She first came to Czechoslovakia after 1990. In 2003 she settled permanently in Prague. Bohuslava Bradbrooková died on February 21, 2019.