One on One | All stories

Jan Bureš is chief economist at Poštovní spořitelna, which is part of the banking group ČSOB. Aged 31, he is one of the most visible Czech economists of his generation, frequently appearing on TV and penning a column for the magazine Respekt. Earlier on Monday I spoke with Jan Bureš at ČSOB’s Prague HQ. My first question: almost exactly two years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered an international economic crisis, what state is the Czech economy in today?

In the early 1990s, Prague was in the spotlight of international media with scores of foreign correspondents reporting on developments in free Czechoslovakia. Since then, the Czech Republic has become a member of the EU and NATO, and has lost much of its attraction for foreign journalists. One of the few foreign correspondents based in Prague today is Dan Bilefsky, who covers the region of central and Eastern Europe for the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times. When we met, I asked Dan Bilefsky why he was based in Prague.

Czech–African relations went through a downturn after the fall of communism, and might suffer another blow as the Czech Foreign Ministry has announced the closure of Czech embassies in Congo and Kenya. In this edition of One on One, we talk to Marie Imbrová, an African studies expert and a former diplomat, who spent eight years at Czech embassies in Kenya and Zimbabwe. She has continued visiting Zimbabwe even after she left the Foreign Ministry, and she is involved in several development projects there. During her sojourn in Africa, she also developed

Back in the mid 1990s Tomáš Zilvar quickly moved from putting together DIY fanzines to publishing glossy titles like Tripmag and XMAG, magazines that were focused on electronic music at a time when that genre was really taking off among young Czechs. Today Zilvar, who is still in his early 30s, has two jobs: running the Prague office of the hip New York-based magazine and website Vice; and offering digitalisation services to Czech media outlets and authors keen to enter the age of e-readers.

Daphne Carr is an American music expert and writer. The focus of her research is not classical but popular music, a field that only recently has warranted attention from academics. Carr’s passion for writing started within what is commonly referred to as the zine culture, zines being small and often underground publications that became popular in America in the 1980s and 1990s. She has stayed true to the underground and found a new favorite in the Czech Republic: the Plastic People of the Universe, who she learned about when she first came to Prague

Jan Bubeník was one of the organisers of a student march in Prague on November 17, 1989 to mark the anniversary of a Nazi crackdown on Czech universities 50 years previously. When the marchers carried on to Národní St in the centre of the city they were brutally attacked by police, an incident which set in train the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia. Bubeník quickly became one of the student leaders of the Velvet Revolution, and even served briefly as a member of parliament. Today he runs a successful recruitment agency. At its Prague offices

Jakub Patočka is the editor-in-chief of an online magazine called Deník Referendum, and a leading Czech left-leaning journalist. He made national headlines at the end of last year when his website ran what it said was the Czech president’s New Year’s address; however, it turned out to be a hoax, made up of the president’s favourite phrases. So was it a marketing trick with a message?

Over the last twenty years, Ron Yerxa has produced a number of films hits. Together with his business partner Albert Berger, he has put out audience favorites such as the drama Cold Mountain or the massively successful road movie comedy Little Miss Sunshine, which won two Oscars. This year, Ron Yerxa was invited to preside over the Grand Jury at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Just after the halfway point of the Czech Republic’s biggest film event, I asked him about his taste in movies, the festival as such and what the experience

Robert Maclean is editor-in-chief of the Central and Eastern European Construction and Investment Journal, a publication he helped set up in 1995. He had already been living in Prague for some years at that point, having “caught the bug” while reporting from the region in the late 1980s. When we met at his office on Wenceslas Square we discussed how the construction industry here has changed in the last two decades, and whether property in the Czech Republic represents a good investment. But I first asked Maclean what had drawn him to the field

The Botanicus chain of stores offering herbal soaps, extracts and delicacies is a Czech, and growing international, success story. Most tourists will have probably bought something from one of their outlets in the country. The small business was founded in the early 1990’s after the restitution of a family farm around 40 kilometres north-east of Prague. That has become the centre for the business and a tourist attraction with more than 50,000 visitors a year. One of the firm’s co-founders Dana Hradecká explained the roots of the original inspiration