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Czechoslovakia was one of the first victims of the Nazis, with the march into the Sudetenland in I938 followed by the occupation of the rest of the country in March 1939 and an increasingly oppressive regime for most of the population. The backlash at the end of WWII was harsh and violent. And that backlash against the Nazi occupiers, Sudeten Germans and Czechs believed to have collaborated in some way is the subject of US historian Benjamin Frommer’s book “National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia.”

One of the most prominent guests at the Forum 2000 conference in Prague earlier this month was the conservative English philosopher and writer Roger Scruton. In the Czech Republic he is well known not just for his extensive writings on the history of modern philosophy, but also for close links he forged with Czechoslovakia in the years before the fall of communism. In this week’s Czech Books, Roger Scruton talks to David Vaughan about how his special relationship to this country has developed over the years.

In the summer of the 2002, Prague was hit by one of the worst floods in the city’s history. The swollen Vltava inundated parts of the historic centre, including the Jewish quarter, which had to be evacuated. This dramatic scene is the setting for the new Czech novel Sidra Noach by David Jan Novotný. The name comes from the weekly readings from the scripture. As it happened, the story of Noah was read in the synagogue just as the waters began to recede.

It is not often that we are given a taste of contemporary Czech poetry in really good English translation. A remarkable exception is a new collection of poems by one of the best Czech poets to emerge in the last twenty-five years, Sylva Fischerová. She translated the poems herself, together with the American poet, academic and translator, Stuart Friebert, and the result, published under the title, “The Swing in the Middle of Chaos”, shows just how fruitful such collaborations can be. David Vaughan met Sylva Fischerová in her book-filled office

Julek Neumann is a man of many talents: theatrical director, actor, journalist, playwright and poet. He is currently writing, directing and acting with a number of Czech theatres after over 25 years abroad, first in Vienna, where he moved from communist Czechoslovakia in 1984, and then in London, where for many years he worked for the Czech section of the BBC. David Vaughan spoke to Julek about a rather neglected, but fascinating aspect of Czech theatre – the central role it has played in the life of Czech communities abroad.

If you want to find out more about the long history of Czechs and Slovaks in the United States, the place to start is The National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The museum was devastated by floods in 2008 and some 6,000 flood-damaged volumes from the library are still being painstakingly restored. But the pace of recovery has been remarkably fast, and within the next couple of years, an ambitious project to rebuild and expand the museum should be complete. With it the library will also be up and running once again.

It is not often that school plays get to be performed at international theatre festivals, still less so when it involves taking performers, props and scenery hundreds of miles half way across a continent. But this is just what happened when a group of teenagers from Britain brought a brand new play to Prague’s Fringe Festival in 2008. And it was not by chance that this play was brought to Prague. In this week’s Czech Books, David Vaughan finds out more from the play’s author.

August 5 was the 20th anniversary of the death of one of the most important Czech 20th century poets. Ivan Blatný spent his last years in Clacton-on-Sea, a resort on the east coast of England. He had spent more than half his life in exile, and most of that time as a patient in various psychiatric hospitals. It was in these unlikely circumstances that he wrote some of his best poetry, after being virtually forgotten as a writer for several decades. David Vaughan has more in this week’s edition of Czech Books.

Not many of the thousands of passengers arriving every day at London’s busy St Pancras Station are aware that they are passing just a few dozen metres away from one of the largest and most diverse collections of Czech books outside the Czech Republic. Tucked in beside the station is the huge, but surprisingly inconspicuous complex of the British Library. In this week’s Czech Books, David Vaughan shows us some of the highlights of the library’s rich Czech collection.

This week’s Czech Books visits the home of the distinguished philosopher and author, Professor Erazim Kohák, to discuss his book, Hearth and Horizon. After exile from Czechoslovakia in 1948, Professor Kohák had a long academic career in the United States, and is Professor Emeritus at Boston University. He returned to his native land in 1990, and since then has continued to teach philosophy and write, is the recipient of the highest academic and cultural honours, and is one of those who could truly be called a public intellectual. Hearth and Horizon