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Martin Palouš was one of the first signatories of the Charter 77 protest document. Since 1989 he has been a parliamentary deputy, an academic, and Czech ambassador to Washington. Now, however, Mr Palouš represents the Czech Republic at the United Nations in New York. When we spoke last week at his office on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue, we began with the subject of Charter 77 and his days as a dissident.

On the occasion of its 660th anniversary, Charles University recently hosted an annual meeting of Europaeum, an association of ten leading European universities, including Oxford. Europaeum also organized a workshop on European migration at the Institute of Economics, drawing young scholars from Leiden, Geneva, Prague, Oxford and Krakow. At the end of the week I met with Europaeum’s secretary general Paul Flather and asked him to tell me more about its history:

My guest this week is Zuzana Ondomišiová who runs an organisation called Portala, which promotes Tibetan cultural issues in the Czech Republic. With the recent protests and subsequent Chinese crackdown, Tibet has certainly been on the radar both in the Czech Republic and around the world. I began by asking her to tell me a little more about this NGO.

When Dr Jana Švehlová’s father was imprisoned by the communists for political reasons it left a deep impression on her life. After doing research into the psychological impact of such experiences on women like herself, she began a group called Daughters of the '50s which is a forum for discussion of often painful memories – and a support group for women whose childhoods, and often subsequent lives, were blighted by the mistreatment of their parents. When I met Dr Švehlová at a Prague centre cafe, she first told me her own family’s story.

In this edition of One on One, my guest is Freemason Marc Verdier, the Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the Czech Republic. French by origin, Mr Verdier settled in Prague fifteen years ago where he now runs his own company. I asked him about the history and the present state of the Masonic movement in the Czech Republic which has recently seen a most unusual development: the Grand Lodge of the Czech Republic has merged with the Grand Czech Orient.

Charles Grant is the director of the Centre for European Reform, one of the UK’s leading pro-EU think tanks. When we met in Prague recently, the conversation ranged from next year’s Czech presidency of the European Union to whether the Czechs should adopt the euro. But my first question for Charles Grant was: what impact have the recent enlargements had on the EU?

Pavel Hnilička is a Prague-based architect and town planner who has authored one of the first books about urban sprawl in the Czech Republic called Sídelní kaše, roughly translatable as Urban or Residential Soup. Prague and other cities and towns in the country have seen unprecedented development in recent years, which the author says is largely indistinguishable from homogenous sprawl witnessed elsewhere in Europe or even North America, albeit on a far smaller scale. I met with the architect at his office in a leafy part of Prague recently to

Pavel Bárta, the spokesman for the Czech Ice Hockey Association, is a former hockey journalist and author with more than 20 years experience. His most recent book covers everything from the 1920s in Czech hockey to the Olympics, including the Czechs’ famous gold win at Nagano ten years ago. In this edition of One on One: a look back at that tournament as well as Pavel Bárta’s early career. When we met at his Prague office recently, the former Bruins fan admitted to a lifelong fascination with North America’s NHL and he began by telling me what it

Lenka Vochocová is twenty-eight, but looks more like eighteen. She may not look like it, but she has already managed to establish and successfully run an NGO called Inventura which helps people with learning disabilities. She has also organized a film festival screening animated films made by some of the people her NGO has helped. I met Lenka Vochocová at her office in Prague’s Smíchov district, to ask her more about her activities:

William Harter came to the Czech capital in 1990 to work as Procter & Gamble’s man in Prague. He was one of the founders and first president of the American Chamber of Commerce in what was then Czechoslovakia. In more recent years, Mr Harter has retired and dedicated a great deal of his time to the Prague chapter of AARO – the Association of American Residents Overseas. He’s been the president of the Prague chapter of the organization now for the past six years. I met William Harter for a cup of coffee in downtown Prague, to ask him more about AARO’s