David Vaughan

It is not unusual to come across poets writing in English even if it is not their mother tongue. But for a non-native speaker to write poetry in Czech is rare indeed, and…

In the course of a life that spanned over 90 years, the writer and translator Heda Margolius Kovály survived the very worst that the twentieth century could bring: first…

Much has been written about Prague as a literary city, as a place that has spurred the imagination of writers. Usually the focus is on the myths of “Magic Prague” from the…

Ever since the publication of the first Czech translation of Longfellow’s Hiawatha in the 1860s, Czechs have had a special affection for the American West. This was always…

In the spring of 1945, just before he ended his six-year exile in Britain, President Edvard Beneš gave an address in English that was broadcast by the BBC. The fight to…

Any list of the top five Czech novels since the fall of communism should include The Sound of the Sundial by Hana Andronikova. This epic love story takes us from pre-war…

One of the early atrocities of World War Two was the violent suppression of protests by Czech university students on 28 October 1939. This was just over six months after…

We have often drawn from Czech Radio’s sound archives in our broadcasts, as they make up one of the richest radio archives in the world, offering insight into the history…

Jana Kotaishová grew up in the countryside of Southern Moravia, but when she married a Palestinian refugee over three decades ago, she embarked on a life that was far…

There are some novels that take us on a journey to a place, either real or imagined; others take us into the world of the mind. Every now and then a novelist manages to do…