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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

Tomáš Baldýnský is one of the Czech Republic’s leading film critics and is known for not pulling any punches in his reviews. He is also the unpaid chairman of the government body which supports Czech film-making, though his term in the post ends soon. When we met the other day we discussed how he manages to reconcile those two activities. But that was after I put it to Tomáš Baldýnský that given the fact most movies aren’t particularly good, it must be hard to maintain his enthusiasm for reviewing.

The pop star Miroslav Žbirka is more commonly known as Miro, and his childhood nickname Meky, by his many fans here in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Prague-based singer released his first record in the late 1970s, with the group Modus, and is still having hits as a solo artist today. Miro Žbirka was born in Bratislava in 1952 to a Slovak father and an English mother. When we spoke the other day, he told me about his parents’ first meeting, in a north London pub.

Julek Neumann is currently appearing at Prague’s Divadlo Ypsilon in a Mark Twain play which he himself translated into Czech. The new production marks his return to the theatre’s stage after a gap of nearly two and a half decades. In between he lived in Vienna and then London, where he worked for the Czech section of the BBC World Service during what was a period of change. When I met Julek Neumann in a café in Dejvice the other evening he first told me a little about his family background.

In this week's One on One, our guest is Jiří Stanislav, a politician and actor who spent half of his life abroad in Canada and the UK. Most recently he appeared in the film Paradise Found in 2003 with Keifer Sutherland and Nastassja Kinsky. But Jiří Stanislav is a man of many trades. He has long been interested in politics, and a few years ago he became the head of a Czech political party. He is now also the mayor of a small community in Moravia. I started by asking Jiří Stanislav, what was more enjoyable – acting or politics.

Today’s guest on One on One is Jiri Dedecek – singer, political activist, Czech PEN club president, and translator. Mr Dedecek is perhaps best known for his translations from Russian and French into Czech. One of his most recent projects was translating the songs of Jacques Brel and Vladimir Vysockij for the ballet ‘Solo for Three’, which premiered at the National Theatre in Prague in May of this year. I caught up with Jiri Dedecek in his expansive office above the National Library, in Prague’s Clementinum.

While many of us are currently running around trying to buy presents, our guest today is busy selling them. But Linda Vavrikova’s company Allegria offers an unusual range of gifts: rather than tangible objects, they sell experiences. They can organise everything from a day spent on the back of a bin lorry to skiing pulled by horses to all kinds of unusual spa treatments. And the business has been a big hit since it was started three years ago: last year Linda Vavrikova, who is 25, was named Czech Businessperson of the Year.