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“Neo-conservative” is not a term heard too often on the Czech political scene, but when it is then more often than not it’s used in reference to Roman Joch, the outspoken head of the right-wing Christian think tank the Civic Institute (Mr Joch himself prefers the title “paleoconservative”, bestowed upon him by the Prime Minister). That history, along with a certain notoriety for inflammatory rhetoric, lent to waves of criticism when Mr Joch was appointed advisor to the Prime Minister on human rights, the definition and conception of which was the

This week’s edition of One on One features one of the joint founders of the biggest Czech publishing house for audio books, Tympanum. The company publishes dozens of titles, not just in Czech but also in Slovak. While still a relatively new phenomenon, Karel Černošek says audio books are beginning to carve out a place for themselves on the market. Chris Johnstone caught up with him recently at a café in the centre of Prague to talk about selling literature as the spoken word.

Steen Agro made a big impact with his first full length feature film, the British-Czech black comedy ‘Shut up and shoot me’ (Sklapni a zastřel mě) in which Czech actors Karel Roden and Anna Geislerová had star roles. Five years on, he has moved to Prague and is seeking to build on his debut success. …..I asked him how tight were the purse strings for that first feature film.

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?