overcast clouds 7.2°C
English
Česky
Deutsch
Русский
22.9.2025 | Tourism
Midsummer Malvern is a summer festival held annually in Great Malvern in Great Britain - the twin town of Marienbad. The festival usually lasts two weeks and includes various lectures, performances, social events, markets, exhibitions. Since the beginning of the partnership, the festival often includes a number of Czech themed events and many times we have been represented as a town; in Malvern, the best memories are, for example, the visit of the singing group and recorder quartet from the F.Chopin ZUŠ Mar. Lázně in 2015. By the way, if the name of the festival Midsummer Malvern reminds you of the name of a popular crime series, you are not wrong, it is a British subtle humour.
This year Mariánské Lázně was represented by Petr Somol, who visited Great Malvern with his partner Hana Pazlarová. We met the organisers and representatives of the town at a great opening evening hosted by Ian Hopwood, the main organiser of the partnership events on the Malvern side, with the presence of the town's mayor Marilyn Birks.
We contributed several talks to the festival programme. Hana Pazlarová gave a lecture at the Malvern Prioryabout Czech SOS children's villages. Petr Somol gave two lectures - at the Priory for the general public on "On computers, artificial intelligence and how to stay human in the digital world" and later at the University Centre in Worcester on "From algorithms to exploits: Digital Security in the Age of Artificial Intelligence".
However, the Czech footprint was also very prominent at the festival thanks to a number of other events. We were surprised at how much interest was generated by the screening of the film Old Men on Hops, including a subsequent discussion with English film enthusiasts. The screening was attended by several members of the English Škoda Owners Club in now-rare Škoda models from the 1960s to the 1990s. At another time, pupils from two primary school classes enjoyed great entertainment with narration and animations by Petr Horáček, a famous Czech illustrator living in Worcester.
As informal representatives of Mariánské Lázně, we also attended other events, including a lecture by historian Philippa Langley on the search for the fate of the lost sons of King Edward IV (a search that led to Malvern, among other places), the unveiling of a plaque to the "third in line" after climbers Hillary and Tenzing's conquest of Everest, and a singing performance by the Hills Singers, who are well known in Mariánské Lázně from their visit in 2018.
On the Malvern side, we are particularly grateful for the warm welcome of the trio of main organisers, Ian Hopwood, Roger Sutton, Mark Young, and The Great Malvern Hotel.
Gallery
