Commemorating US editor and columnist Alan Levy

The US editor and columnist Alan Levy is dead. Mr Levy, lived and worked in Prague since the 1960s, passed away at the age of 72 years on Friday after a brief and courageous battle with cancer. Mr Levy first came to the Czech capital from New York as a journalist in 1967. He was editor-in-chief of The Prague Post, a popular English-language weekly, since its founding in 1991, when he was hired by the owners to help launch the newspaper. His column, "Prague Profile," introducing personalities from all walks of life, was one of the paper's most-read features and appeared 549 times. During his journalistic career Mr Levy interviewed personalities such as former Czech president Vaclav Havel, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, the Beatles, and authors Graham Greene and W.H. Auden. He also chronicled the Prague Spring reform movement and the Warsaw Pact invasion that followed in numerous articles and a book called "Rowboat to Prague".