David Vaughan

When the "Year of Czech Music" was launched in January, the jazz flute player, Jiri Stivin, complained that this year's celebrations were focusing far too much on…

If you go to Bratislavska Street, just outside the old centre of Brno, you'll find a museum that is unique of its kind in the Czech Republic. Amid the crumbling tenement…

We don't usually use archive recordings for Witness, but today we'll make an exception. This year is the 65th anniversary of the tragic day in March 1939, when German…

Justin Quinn arrived in Prague from Dublin in 1992. He is a teacher of literature at Charles University. He has written three highly regarded collections of poetry: the…

With the recent violent clashes over social welfare reforms, the Roma villages of rural Slovakia have hit the headlines with images of poverty and squalor, but this is…

It is exactly 75 years since the first Czech set foot on the Antarctic. His name was Vaclav Vojtech, and he travelled with an expedition organized by the American Richard…

A new book has gone on sale in both a Czech and an English version, that tells the deeply moving story of the little village of Lidice, just outside Prague. Over the years…

Welcome to Czech Books. Ivan Blatny is one of the most interesting but most neglected Czech poets of the 20th century. He was born in Brno in 1919 and died in England in…

Pavel Theiner was eleven when his family left Prague in 1968. From his London exile Pavel's father became one of the most prominent figures in the Czech émigré literary…

It's a hundred years since the premiere of one of the great Czech operas, "Jenufa", by Leos Janacek. The centenary was marked in style last month with an international…