One on One | All stories

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?

Kim Longinotto’s Dreamcatcher is a compelling documentary centred on the remarkable Brenda Myers-Powell. A former prostitute and drug addict, she now runs a foundation helping other women to get off the streets of Chicago. The film, which picked up a prize at Sundance, is also a shattering account of the abuse experienced by many girls and young women in the city’s ghettos.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2012 film The Act of Killing is a portrait of now elderly members of mid-1960s Indonesian death squads who boast openly about their unspeakable actions in a killing spree that left an estimated half a million people dead. Nominated for an Oscar, it was also named one of the 50 best documentaries of all time by Sight and Sound magazine. A companion film, The Look of Silence, in which the brother of a victim meets his killers, has just taken the Best Film prize at Prague’s One World festival of human rights documentaries.

Hassan Mezian is the only Muslim legislator in the Czech Parliament. The Social Democrat senator moved to Prague from Damascus to study medicine in 1967, and, apart from spells in his native Syria and elsewhere, has spent most of his life practicing in the central Bohemian town of Litoměřice. When we met at the Senate, our conversation took in Syria, Czech Muslim life, and growing anti-Muslim populism in politics. But first I was curious to hear about Dr. Mezian’s period treating Bedouins during his military service.