New book reveals unusual facts about ten presidents
Did you know that eight of the ten presidents of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic spent time in prison? Or that Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, rode horses until the age of eighty three, and one of his favourites was a bay horse called Hektor? A recently released book titled "Ten Presidents" gives us these and other unusual insights into the lives of the presidents of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.
I spoke to Mr Budinsky at the launch of "Ten Presidents," and asked him about some of the more bizarre details from the lives of the heads of state. Take, for example, Czechoslovakia's second communist president Antonin Zapotocky, who horrified Stalin because he wrote novels:
"He actually had problems because of this, because there were Soviet advisers here, and they conveyed to Stalin that the Czech premier - he was then premier, and afterwards became president - writes novels. Stalin was horrified, and he asked how it was possible that a communist politician writes novels - how does he have time to manage that? And he complained. Zapotocky actually wrote a letter of apology to him, in which he said that he writes the novels in his free time, that he actually gets up early in the morning before he goes to work and writes novels, or he writes them during his holidays. And that otherwise he works duly. He even sent Stalin his books with an apology that they hadn't yet been translated into Russian."
And while Mr Budinsky has filled his book with interesting anecdotes about former presidents, he also managed to include a chapter on the current Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, who was elected just over a month ago. So how does Mr Budinsky assess President Klaus so far?
"What's very interesting about Vaclav Klaus is that he has a fine style: he is well-dressed, he speaks English perfectly, he is a sportsman. And actually he is a man who could be considered an ideal model for a lot of citizens. That's one thing. The other thing is that he has a political career behind him that not everyone can agree with. But it is curious that, the moment he became president, he seemed to cut himself off from his right-wing political career in the ODS, he seemed to fall in love with the role of the president, and he began to act completely differently than he did before. And let's hope it lasts."
