The Tin Ring, by Zdenka Fantlova

Below is a message from Ann Rachlin, recommending a remarkable survival story:

I would like to recommend a book entitled “The Tin Ring” by Zdenka Fantlova.    Zdenka is now 95 years old, lives alone in London and is a dear friend of mine.  She is unique.   Zdenka is 95 years old and lives alone in London.   She survived six concentration camps, two death marches and was eventually liberated in Bergen Belsen by the British on April 15th 1945. dying from starvation and typhoid and weighing 77 lbs.   Zdenka lost her entire family in the Holocaust.  She eventually went to Australia, where she became an actress, married and had one daughter.
Four months ago on January  along with 150 young teenage pupils and their parents, I listened with rapt attention as she told her story.   Standing for over an hour and speaking  without a note of any kind, she gently related her story of her love for Arno, her fiancé whom she adored and their determination to overcome the difficulties facing them and live their lives together after the War.  Sadly it was not to be.

The end of her story, when a British soldier, liberating Bergen Belsen, saved her life is at the same time, spine-chilling and uplifting.   How she came to speak English and how her ability to talk to the British soldier in his own language, saved her life, is one of the most moving parts of the story, told so simply and so fervently by this courageous survivor, diminutive in physical stature, but huge in the power of her strength of spirit over the cruelty of the Nazis and the horrors of the Holocaust.

As Zdenka finished her story, many of the children in the audience had tears running down their cheeks.   Many have since spoken and written about the impact she had on them.   14 year old Daniel Culham wrote

 Thank you so much for your talk. The holocaust is something that has interested me and therefore it was fascinating to hear your accounts as a Jew in the holocaust.  Something which was evident from your talk was the power of love. It was inspirational to hear about your feelings for Arno and how your feelings for him gave you a meaning to your life and the hope needed to continue living. I have been thinking about how love is far more powerful than hate and how I should apply this to my life. Another thing which I thought about was the power of communication. Your talk reminded me that through communication we can understand each other, relate and have empathy for each other and we can work together to achieve a greater good. I have thought about how if we can communicate we can achieve so much more than if we disregard each other and focus on our own needs. I am sure I will remember this talk for the rest of my life and I am so glad I came to it. I look forward to reading your book – The Tin Ring.
Zdenka received a standing ovation of several minutes and then, she moved to a table where, for over an hour, she signed her books and talked to the schoolchildren and their teachers and parents, who were queuing round the hall to buy their copy of  "The Tin Ring" and have it signed by Zdenka Fantlova.  Some of the members may have seen Zdenka on the “Antique Road Show” when she tried to find the soldier who saved her life.

In spite of all her experiences at the hands of the Nazis, Zdenka is positive in her outlook on life.  She tells her story simply, speaking from the heart without bitterness or condemnation.   There is nothing miserable or pathetic about her.  She is inspirational.  To hear her speak is a life-changing experience that you remember for the rest of your life.

I have invited Zdenka to Winchelsea on Sunday October 15th at 3pm when she will appear in a special concert entitled "LIFE  IS WONDERFUL" a phrase  Zdenka often personally inscribes in her book.  Appearing with her will be the young virtuoso Israeli violinist, Itamar Rashkovsky and nine other talented Jewish musicians who will play music from Terezin concentration camp, composed and originally performed by Zdenka's fellow prisoners, all of whom perished in the gas chambers.   Zdenka is now the last survivor of the performers of Terezin.   The concert will be held in St Thomas the Martyr Church in Winchelsea, a unique occasion which is already attracting a great deal of interest both in this area and further afield.  Visitors are coming from far and wide to hear Zdenka’s uplifting talk on life and how she survived.   Her book will be available after the concert when she will sign and dedicate it to purchasers.

I think it would be most beneficial if the members of the Literary Society were to read “The Tin Ring” before the October 15th concert.

It is not a long book but it is well written, is totally riveting and awe-inspiring.  Zdenka has no bitterness and believes fervently that “Every Day is a Gift” and “Life is wonderful”.  One leaves her presence with a renewed zest for life and a sense of purpose and resilience.   She is by far the most important and inspirational woman I have ever met.  

In these troubled times when disturbing stories of anti-semitism and racism are published daily, it is essential that we educate our young people and their families, inspiring them to make sure the horrors of the Holocaust never happen again.   That is why Zdenka's visit to the South East coast is so important.   I do hope that the Literary Society will approve this suggestion that they read “The Tin Ring” and discuss its impact on each and every one of its readers.

Best wishes

Ann Rachlin 

PS.  The book retails at £8.99 but I can possibly obtain copies from Zdenka’s publisher for £6 if that is of interest.

Literary Society News 1 May 2017

Recent Programme:


Last Meeting 21 April 2017
GUY FRASER-SAMPSON

On April 21^st the Literary Society enjoyed a talk on British Crime Fiction by Winchelsea resident and writer Guy Fraser-Sampson. Guy has published books on finance and investment, and is a consultant and lecturer at the Cass Business School. He has also written a book on cricketing history. In recent years he has turned to fiction, first with three books which continue the Mapp and Lucia saga chronicled by EF Benson, and these have been optioned by BBC Television. More recently he has been writing crime fiction, with a series of detective novels under the general heading The Hampstead Murders, reflecting their location. The first of these, Death in Profile, was published in March 2016. Guy is a member of the Crime Writers Association and has spoken about his books at literary festivals around the country and on Radio 4.

Guy identified two extremes of current British crime fiction: the ‘Scandi-noir’- type books, which feature increasingly violent death in bleak landscapes, and the ‘cosy’ stories, set in implausibly quaint English villages. His aim is to develop a middle ground, with police procedural novels which are quirky and unusual. Rather than using the formulaic plot structures and damaged central characters of much modern crime fiction, he offers readers a team of likeable police officers whose careers and personal lives evolve from one book to the next. Guy said that said he did not plan the structure of a book in advance, chapter by chapter, fitting the characters into the plot, as advocated by some creative writing teachers. Instead he prefers to establish characters first and then let the plot evolve around them. Some characters prove to be so forceful that they take over from others as a story progresses.

Much of Guy’s talk was about the crime writers who have inspired him, especially those from the inter-war ‘golden age’ of crime fiction; in particular, Freeman Wills Croft, Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers, John Creasey, Derek Raymond and Christopher Fowler. We heard amusing anecdotes on long-forgotten writers like Marie Corelli, who wrote bodice-rippers where half-clad damsels were roughly treated by men in tight white trousers. He had reservations about Agatha Christie, who he felt had excellent plotting skills but failed to develop characters. Although English, Raymond Chandler set his fiction in California, and aimed to write stories about real people, rather than fanciful characters. He fell outside the scope of Guy’s talk, but held some interesting views on detective writing, expressed in a famous essay The Simple Art of Murder.  

Guy offered copies of ‘Death in Profile’ to anyone who could answer three questions: 1. Who wrote the book on which the film The Lady Vanishes was based? (A: Ethel Lina White - The Wheel Spins) 2. Who wrote the book on which the film Suspicion was based? (A: Francis Iles aka Anthony Berkeley - Before the Fact) 3. Who introduced the phrase ‘elementary, my dear Watson’, and which writer subsequently adopted it? (A: P.G. Wodehouse -  Psmith in the City, and Agatha Christie - the Tommy and Tuppence stories). Only part 1 of question three was correctly answered.

The talk provoked a good number of questions and answers, and Guy promised that a list of the writers and stories he had mentioned would be available to us all, via the Lit Soc blog, as indeed it now is. (See below)

Peter Southgate

Forthcoming activities:

Next Meeting: Friday 19 May

Members' evening: Bring along a reading ( 5 minutes maximum), to share with the rest of the society on the theme "Perchance to Dream"

Suggested reading list from Guy Fraser-Sampson's Literary Society talk 21 April 2017, on British Crime Fiction

Freeman Wills Croft:

·        The Hog’s Back Mystery

·        Mystery in the Channel

Josephine Tey:

·        The Man in the Queue

·        The Daughter of Time

·        Miss Pym Disposes

Ngaio Marsh:

·        Clutch of Constables

·        Final Curtain

·        False Scent

Dorothy L Sayers:

·        Strong Poison

·        Murder Must Advertise

·        Gaudy Night

John Creasey (aka J.J. Marric, etc.):

·        Gideon’s Day (as J.J. Marric)

·        Battle for Inspector West

·        Run Away to Murder (as Jeremy York)

Literary Society News 1 April 2017

Theatre outing 9 March 2017:

 A group of members went to the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury to see a spectacular production of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" Thanks to Hilary Roome, our new secretary, for organising this.

 Literary Society Meeting 17 March 2017: 

Thanks to Jonty Driver for the following:

Marion Molteno was born, brought up and educated in South Africa.  After involvement in student politics in the early 1960s, she and her husband, the academic Robert Molteno, moved to Zambia for eight years, until Robert himself was detained by the Zambian authorities, ostensibly for inciting students to rebellion.  She, Robert and their daughters relocated to London, where he became a publisher and she worked for UNICEF, traveling widely in Africa and Asia. She also came under the intellectual influence of the Urdu poet, Ralph Russel. Her stories and novels grow mainly from these experiences of the international and exiled communities: A Language in Common is a book of stories about the lives and work of women.  Then there are four novels; A Shield of Coolest Air, If you can walk, you can dance (set partly in London and partly in South Africa);  Somewhere More Simple (set mainly in the Scilly Islands) and Uncertain Light ( set in Central Asia).

In two talks in mid-March in Rye and Winchelsea, the first in the new Rye Bookshop under the capable leadership of Lizzy Lee, the second to the Winchelsea Literary Society, Marion talked first of her development as a novelist and then of how important place is as the setting of her novels. She was remarkably frank about the difficulties she had faced as a novelist:  after the critical success of her first book (which won a Commonwealth Writer’s prize), she expected to find an agent and a publisher without any difficulty; yet this proved not to be the case, and she ended by founding her own publishing house.  Hard work and the support of friends - and a certainty that what she was doing mattered artistically as well as socially - led to success, and her novels now sell comfortably well.  The most recent -Uncertain Light - has been a considerable success in the Indian sub-continent and a second edition is being published. Marion is also being invited to literary festivals in India and in the UK.

Of course luck plays a part:  at a meeting of writers in the Writers’ Centre in Norwich in 2015, Marion happened to make friends with an Indian writer;  hence the invitation to an Indian literary festival, and in due course an increasing readership in India and publication there. However, without imagination luck by itself would be of no consequence.  For instance, in If you can walk, you can dance, Marion’s own experience of learning to play the violin as a middle-aged student in London is brilliantly transmuted to an account of a character’s experience of learning to play the ‘cello.  For instance, her interest in Urdu poetry becomes a significant part of the story of Uncertain Light.

Those who hadn’t before read Marion’s novels but who heard her talk in Rye and/or Winchelsea will now be wanting to read her;  and those who already knew something of her work will be waiting, with considerable interest, to see what he

Future Events (1) :

The next LiterarySociety meeting is on Friday 21 April, when Guy Fraser-Sampson will be talking on: "British Crime Fiction: From the Golden Age to Brit Noir"  This is an alteration to the programme initially circulated. The play reading originally scheduled for this date has been postponed to later in the year.

Future Events (2) :

Ann Driver has asked me to draw attention to the following event: 

Canciones Amatorias 7th May Brighton

Eline Vandenheede is a young soprano with a world class voice. She possesses a beautiful, warm, rich and powerful velvet tone. 

She has studied at The Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and at The Guildhall in the Artist Masters Programme. Past roles include Ilse in Spring Awakening by Benoit Mernier, and the title role in Massenet’s Cendrillon at the Festival de Musique Valois 2016 in Provence. 

Distinguished pianist Chavdar Mazgalov accompanies.

More details can be found in the link: CLICK HERE

Future Events (3)

On Saturday 8th July, from 3-4 p.m. in the church of St Mary’s in the Marsh, as part of the JAM (John Armitage Memorial) Festival in the Romney Marshes, Jonty Driver be reading some of his sequence of poems, The Journey Back , first published in the 1990s, about his return visit to South Africa after thirty years of exile. Peter Fields will be playing on the violin a variety of pieces in between some of the poems. Admission is free, though there will be a collection for the Hantam Community Education Trust in the Karoo.