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Our guest in this week's One on One is Professor Graham Melville-Mason, an expert in Czech classical music. Professor Melville-Mason is the only non-Czech member of the artistic board of the Prague Spring International Music Festival, and is also head of Britain's Dvorak Society for Czech and Slovak music. A fluent Czech speaker, he's spent decades researching and promoting the work of Czech classical composers. When I interviewed Professor Melville-Mason recently, I began by asking him when his fascination with Czech music began.

In this week's One on One Jan's guest is Jaroslav Rudis, one of the Czech Republic's most exciting new authors. He's one of the creators of a cult graphic novel called White Creek, based on the exploits of a very unusual Czech train dispatcher. The dispatcher, named Alois Nebel, appears to suffer from delusions on his railway line. All the same, his visions cast some of the events of 20th century borderland Czechoslovakia in sharp relief, making for a thrilling read.

The British journalist and author Neal Ascherson is widely regarded as one of the UK's leading experts on central and eastern Europe, and has experienced some of the key moments in the region's recent history at first hand. When he visited Prague recently, I asked Neal Ascherson where his interest in this part of the world had come from.

Martin Jan Stransky's great-grandfather was a minister in the first government of Czechoslovakia in 1918, and founded the newspaper Lidove Noviny. Mr Stransky's grandfather and father were also involved in high politics, until the family had to leave after the Communist takeover of 1948. Martin Stransky, a doctor, moved to Prague in 1990, where among other things he revived the family's journal, Presence, which was shut down by the Nazis. When I met Mr Stransky at his office on Narodni Street, I asked him what he had been doing before he moved to

Rob Cameron's guest in this week's One on One is the writer Ivan Klima, one of the most important cultural figures in the Czech Republic. Ivan Klima was born in Prague in 1931, and during the war was sent to the Terezin concentration camp - his father was Jewish, although he himself was raised as a Protestant. He later became a successful author, but was labelled a dissident by the Communist authorities and his writings were banned.

In today's One on One, Pavla Horakova's guest is Pavel Vesely. Pavel has spent a year in Afghanistan, working as the head of a mission run by the Czech humanitarian organisation, the People in Need Foundation.

My guest today has, without any exaggeration, been to hell and back: Brian Keenan was kidnapped in Beirut in 1986 by the militant group Islamic Jihad and held hostage in the most appalling conditions for almost five years. Mr Keenan, who comes from Belfast, won a great deal of respect and admiration for the way he documented his terrible experiences in his book "An Evil Cradling". When he was in Prague last weekend promoting the Czech version of the book, I spoke to Brian Keenan in the dining room of his hotel. He began by outlining what had happened

In today's One on One Jan's guest is Gail Whitmore a mezzo soprano from New York, whose career that has taken her around Europe and eventually brought her to the Czech Republic. Here she's moved on to other things, like co-hosting her own English language radio show and recently clinching the title of national karaoke champion.

Rob Cameron's guest in this week's One on One is Pavel Pechacek, a Czech journalist of some 40 years' standing. Pavel spent much of his life in exile, working as a reporter and producer for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America. He was the director of the Czech service of RFE from just before the fall of Communism in 1989 until the service was closed down last year, and is now the RFE's Director of Czech Affairs. His family faced persecution from two totalitarian regimes - first the Nazis, then the Communists. Indeed one of Pavel's

My guest on One on One this week is my Czech Radio colleague, Vit Pohanka. Vit is one of three Czech journalists who were taken captive in Iraq last week. Along with a Czech TV reporter and cameraman, he spent six days being held by an unknown Iraqi group somewhere in the country outside Baghdad.