David Vaughan

In today’s programme we look at two novels, both published within the last two years by American writers with Czech roots. Both have chosen the same series of wartime…

For the younger generation that had grown up after the end of World War II, the Soviet-led invasion of August 1968 was traumatic. The Prague Spring had brought an…

In this week’s From the Archives we continue our look at how radio covered the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Today we follow the part played by the…

Few books written in the Czech Republic since the fall of communism have aroused as much debate as Tereza Boučková’s 2008 novel, Rok kohouta. The title translates as Year…

In the days and weeks that followed the end of the Second World War, 31-year-old Josefina Napravilová noticed that there was a job that needed to be done and without any…

In the course of 1968 the Soviet Union made it increasingly clear that it disapproved strongly of the Prague Spring reforms. Yet, despite mounting tensions with Moscow…

The political reforms of the 1960s accelerated dramatically when on January 5 1968 Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist Party, the most powerful…

During the Second World War, over 140,000 people were imprisoned in the Terezín ghetto north of Prague. Their only crime was to be Jewish. One in four died in the ghetto…

Nothing better symbolizes the political thaw in 1960s Czechoslovakia than the boom in jazz, which many saw as embodying the very idea of individual expression and freedom…

If any country in the world is home to the Christmas carol, it has to be the Czech Republic. The tradition of carolling goes back centuries, and Czech Christmas music is a…