David Vaughan

Regular listeners will know this is the Year of Czech Music. One of the highlights of the year will be celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of perhaps…

You may remember an interview we broadcast last year with Zdenek Macal, when he was appointed chief conductor of the greatest of all Czech orchestras, the Czech…

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…