David Vaughan

In the last years of the Cold War, Radio Prague’s English department was many times bigger than it is today and divided into several sections, devoted to different parts…

This weekend is the 70th anniversary of the Nazi destruction of the village of Lidice. Shortly after the massacre, the British novelist Kathleen Hewitt wrote: “The tragedy…

The last years of the Brezhnev era were a period of deep mistrust between the Soviet Union and the United States. As disarmament talks stumbled and both countries expanded…

When I first moved to Prague nearly two decades ago, Czech friends were often amazed that I had never heard of the American singer, Dean Reed. Dubbed the “Red Elvis”, Reed…

The Czech media landscape is changing beyond recognition, as anyone who used to listen to Radio Prague on shortwave knows only too well. So how is the Czech Republic…

On March 2 1978 - for the first time - a person was launched into space who was neither a Soviet nor an American citizen. His name was Vladimír Remek, and he came from…

Not many people would give up the salary, status and security of a job as a high-flying European lawyer for all the uncertainties of being a full time writer. But this is…

In the 1970s the Cold War was fought on many fronts. One of them was Northern Ireland, where the tension and violence that raged throughout the decade also became part of…

Anniversaries give us the chance to think again about the meaning of events and their relevance today. Next month it will be exactly 70 years since the destruction by the…

If there was one sound guaranteed to infuriate Czechoslovakia’s communist leaders during the 1970s and 80s it was the call-sign of the US-funded Radio Free Europe…