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Refugees have been in the spotlight in the Czech Republic in recent months, with news broadcasts regularly reporting on the number of migrants detained, issues surrounding asylum facilities and the sometimes unsympathetic pronouncements of politicians. But how well are the Czech authorities handling the situation? And what are the legal challenges faced by migrants detained by the police? I discussed those questions and more with lawyer Hana Franková, head of the legal department of the NGO Organizace pro Pomoc Uprchlíkům (Organisation for Aid to

Zdeněk Lyčka has just been made acting director of the Czech Centres, a network of institutes that promote Czech culture on the international stage. Mr. Lyčka, who is 57, himself headed the Czech Centre in Stockholm at the end of the 1990s and has also served as Czech ambassador to Denmark. When we spoke, I asked him how much independence the 22 Czech Centres around the world enjoy – do they have to coordinate every step with Prague, or do they have a lot of room to do their own thing?

A number of media outlets in this part of the world are spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda with a view to undermining faith in Western institutions. That is the message of a study recently published by the Prague Security Studies Institute entitled The Pro-Russian Disinformation Campaign in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I discussed various aspects of this purported campaign with the author of the report, Ivana Smoleňová. My first question: What particular media outlets are involved?

Singer Lenka Lichtenberg was born in Prague where she was a child star with the Semafor theatre in the 1960s. Several years after her emigration to Canada, and well into her career as a singer, she began performing songs in Yiddish. When I asked her whether she had known the language in her young days, it sparked a fascinating discussion about the parallel experiences of the singer and her mother, who like Lenka Lichtenberg was unaware of her Jewish background when she was very young.

Prague-born world music artist Lenka Lichtenberg is today based in Canada and sings in many languages, including English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish. But many Czechs of a certain age will remember her as Lenka Hartlová from her days as a 1960s child star performing alongside Jiří Suchý at the famous Semafor theatre. We met recently when the singer-songwriter was on a visit to native city. My opening question: How did she first get into music as a child?

James Ragan is a US poet, screenwriter, playwright and teacher with extremely strong Czechoslovak ties. Indeed some of his siblings were born in Eastern Slovakia before his parents decided during the Depression to build new lives in Pittsburgh. Ragan began visiting Communist Czechoslovakia as a teenager and in recent decades – inspired by a meeting with Václav Havel – the writer has been a visiting professor at Prague’s Charles University every summer.

The recently published The Irish Franciscans in Prague 1629–1786 offers a fascinating portrait of the college set up here by the order at a turbulent time in European history. As well as mapping the world of the friars, the book explores the killing of Albrecht of Valdštejn by Irish soldiers acting under orders from the emperor, which led to some becoming Bohemian noblemen – and supporters of the friary.

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