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This Wednesday a bust of Václav Havel will be unveiled at Ireland’s Dáil (Parliament), making him the first non-Irishman to be recognised in this way. The man behind the move is barrister Bill Shipsey. The founder of Art for Amnesty, he also raised funding for a tapestry in the late Czech president’s honour at the then freshly renamed Václav Havel Airport Prague and brought the first Havel’s Place memorial in Europe to Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Park.

The Green Mountain Manuscript (Rukopis zelenohorský) and the Queen’s Court Manuscript (Rukopis královédvorský) were important texts in the Czech National Revival of the 19th century, helping to underpin burgeoning national consciousness and becoming part of the broader culture. However, the compendia of Czech legends and folklore turned out to be forgeries. David Cooper of the University of Illinois is currently in Prague doing research into and translating the manuscripts. He discussed them on a visit to our studios last week.

German-born cameraman Walter Lassally worked on some of the greatest films produced in the British New Wave of the 1960s, including classics such as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and A Taste of Honey. The recipient of an Oscar for Zorba the Greek, he also has some Czech connections, including shooting the movie The Clown with his friend Vojtěch Jasný. Lassally (88), who was in Prague last week for the Cinematographers Days festival, made documentaries early in his career as part of the ground-breaking Free Cinema movement – so I asked

As his secretary for nearly a decade and a half, Vladimír Hanzel was extremely close to the late Václav Havel. In this the second part of a two-part interview, Mr. Hanzel describes how the former dissident adjusted to life as president and how he was changed by four terms at Prague Castle. He also discusses Havel’s relationship to music – and his audacious plan to get the remaining Beatles to reform in the Czech capital.

Few people were as close to Václav Havel as his secretary of 14 years, Vladimír Hanzel. Originally a music critic and computer programmer, Hanzel was by Havel’s side in his dissident days before serving under him at Prague Castle during four terms as president. He was also the first person in December 2011 to make public the news of the death of the man who led Czechoslovakia to democracy. When we spoke, I began by asking Vladimír Hanzel about his fateful first encounter with Václav Havel.

Tailored tours for relatively small groups with particular interests have become a trend in the tourism industry in recent times. One such excursion available in the Czech capital goes under the banner Eating Prague Tours and sees locals taking visitors to restaurants, cafés and food stores and offering them an “insider’s” insight into Czech cuisine. I discussed its services – and more – with Eating Prague Tours’ operations manager, Mirka Charlotte Kostelková.

This Wednesday Prague’s Anglo-American University will be holding a double celebration. The institution will be marking 25 years of existence – and officially opening its new campus at the magnificent Thurn-Taxis Palace in Malá Strana. Ahead of the celebrations I visited the building to meet Anglo-American’s president, Associate Professor Alan Krautstengl. I first asked how hard it had been for his predecessors to sell the idea of a private, English-language university so soon after the fall of communism.

The multi-million selling classical crossover artist Maksim Mrvica is set to perform in the Czech capital for the first time next month. Ahead of that concert, the Croatian pianist, who looks like more like a rock star than most rock stars, stopped by at Radio Prague’s studios for a conversation that took in everything from his experiences as a teenager during the Yugoslav conflict to “Maksim-mania” in the Far East.

Just like society in general, Czech has changed markedly since the Velvet Revolution, says Karel Oliva, director of the Institute of the Czech Language. There is now greater informality in Czech – and a divisive trend of women with foreign husbands not using the traditional “ová” surname ending.

Why have Czechs evidently lost some faith in Europe in recent years? Does the Czech Republic have core foreign policies? And are there any consequences for the country’s president and other officials not singing from the same hymn sheet on Russia? These are just some issues I discussed the other day with Jakub Janda, who is deputy head of the think tank European Values. But my first question for Janda was: What exactly do think tanks do?