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Steve Fisher has a humorous column in the weekly Reflex that regularly provides a highly amusing take on Czech life from a foreigner’s perspective. The US-born author has had a host of other jobs in over two decades in Prague, including radio DJ, bit-part actor and voiceover artist. In recent years, however, he was forced to work less, after surviving an extremely serious illness that left him handicapped. We discussed all of those things at his Prague 3 apartment last week. But I first asked Fisher about his initial impressions of the city, when

The Prague Vitruvius is an extremely useful website for anybody interested in perhaps the Czech capital’s greatest asset: its unparalleled wealth of architecture. The blog is the work of Englishman Alex Went, who has created close to 300 entries taking in both tourist sights and largely unknown gems in the suburbs. When we spoke at the Vinohrady Pavilion – designed by one of his favourite Prague architects – I asked Went what had brought him to the city in the first place.

Wolfe von Lenkiewicz is a recognized London-based artist known for his reconfigurations of well-known imageries from art history. He is currently exhibiting some of his works at Galerie MIRO in Prague. Radio Prague’s editor-in-chief Miroslav Krupicka attended the exhibition’s opening last week and later met up with the artist to talk about his usual style of work. He began by asking what had led him to exhibit in Prague.

The UK’s ambassador to the Czech Republic since the summer, Jan Thompson adopts a relatively informal approach that includes driving what must be the country’s only 1969 Škoda with diplomatic plates. Prague is Thompson’s first posting as ambassador and follows stints in conflict zones around the world as well as post-tsunami Thailand. When she visited our studios, I first asked if there had been any particular standout moments in her career to date.

One of the more interesting bands performing around the Czech Republic this summer are Kon Sira, who play traditional songs of the Sephardic Jews as well as Balkan music. The group’s Kateřina Garcia herself has an unusually interesting background: Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha was her great-grandfather, while one of her grandfathers was a Spanish Civil War veteran who fled to Russia. Kateřina has lived in Spain and here in the Czech Republic but is now based in Dublin, where she teaches at Trinity College. When we met, I first asked where her

The new documentary Toman Brod: Praha – Terezín – Birkenau – Märzbachtal – Praha is the portrait of a Holocaust survivor who is today in his mid 80s. But what’s different about this feature-length film is that it was made by a schoolboy. Indeed, director Matouš Bičák was only 15 when he and his classmates – inspired by a school project – set off with Toman Brod to record his remarkable stories of survival in Nazi concentration camps.

In the last two decades, Prague’s Archa Theatre has firmly established itself as the country’s foremost space for alternative drama, dance and music, hosting such luminaries as Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, John Cale and Patti Smith. This month the venue is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its opening, so I caught up with the man who created Archa and is still its director, Ondřej Hrab. He told me in his youth he had hated watching plays – but chance encounters opened his eyes to a new kind of theatre.

Míla Fürstová is currently enjoying a level of exposure that most artists can only dream of. The Czech’s exquisite etching of angel’s wings against the background of a starry sea appears on the cover of Ghost Stories, the hit new LP by one of the planet’s biggest rock bands, Coldplay. Indeed, her intricate illustrations are at present central to the group’s visuals, also appearing on single sleeves and merchandising.

Director Tomáš Pilař is regarded as a coming man in the world of Czech opera. And the 25-year-old is already incredibly busy; this season he is working on more than a dozen different projects at opera houses in various corners of the country. When we met recently, we discussed the craft of opera direction, the state of the art form in the Czech Republic and his own ambitions. But I first asked Pilař – who is also a stage designer – whether he came from a musical family.

Prague’s Žižkov district is where you’ll find Bohemia Retro, a vintage clothing store packed with hard-to-find items mainly from pre-1989 Czechoslovakia. The cosy, colourful shop is run by Rebecca Eastwood, an expat Brit and part-time singer who has been resident here since the early 1990s. When I stopped by at Bohemia Retro the other day, I began by asking Eastwood what had brought her to this part of the world in the first place.