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Hedy Fromings is a retired architect in her late 70s, though she is still very much active as the head of the Beskydy Dancers, a Czech dance and music group in London. When I met her in the British capital a few days ago, Mrs Fromings told me all about her young days as a refugee in the UK during World War II, her family's fortunes, and how she met her English husband.

The 10th annual Forum 2000 conference, which this year focuses on the Dilemmas of Global Co-existence, has brought many leaders from the world of politics, business, and academia to Prague. Among them is former Canadian Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Kim Campbell - the only woman to have ever served as head of state in North America. Kim Campbell was only 46 years old when she became the Prime Minister of Canada in 1993. Today she is the Secretary General of the Club of Madrid, an organization she co-founded.

Bohuslav Jan Prochazka and his companion Jindrich Kubiasa set off from the Prague Auto Club on Opletalova Street 70 years ago, on April 25, 1936. They were driving a Skoda Rapid car - and their aim was to set a new record for travelling 360 degrees around the world. In this special programme, Prochazka's son Bret tells us all about this remarkable journey.

August 31st is a very special day for Radio Prague. Exactly 70 years ago, in 1936, Radio Prague made its first ever broadcast in English. But radio is not only about interviews and reports. The main reason we are here, are you, the listeners, in the case of Radio Prague scattered all around the globe.

If we delve into the Czech Radio archives, we find recordings in English going right back to Radio Prague's beginnings 70 years ago. Some of the extracts we are going to feature in this programme have not been aired for well over half a century. They capture some of the most interesting and dramatic moments in our history.

Radio Prague made its first ever broadcast 70 years ago, on August 31, 1936. Ahead of Thursday's anniversary I visited our original transmission centre in Podebrady, central Bohemia, in the company of Czech Radio's shortwave expert Oldrich Cip. In the second half of this two-part report, he and I discuss - among other things - the beginnings of Radio Prague, Communist-era radio jamming and the future of short-wave broadcasting.

This coming Thursday, August 31, is the 70th anniversary of Radio Prague's first ever broadcast. Ahead of the big day, I decided to pay a visit to the place our first programme was broadcast from in 1936; Radio Prague's original transmission centre is a very interesting building just outside the central Bohemian town of Podebrady, and is now home to a golf club. My guide was Oldrich Cip, Czech Radio's shortwave expert.

There is one corner of England that is forever Czech. If you drive through the open, windswept landscape of the Thames marshes just beyond the eastern suburbs of London, you come to a rather unlikely modernist Czech Utopia. This is the small town of East Tilbury, built almost entirely in the 1930s. When the great Czech shoe magnate, Tomas Bata, arrived here 75 years ago, this was nothing but farmland. It was the time when the Bata shoe empire, which he had built up in the eastern Czech town of Zlin was expanding fast, with a mission to "shoe the

Every summer for the past 39 years, students from around the globe have gathered at Brno's Masaryk University to work on their Czech at the annual Czech Language summer school, or letni skola. Throughout the month of August they've been drilled in grammar, they've memorized new vocabulary words, and they've practiced conversation.

The variety of people found at Charles University's Czech summer language school is vast. Some have a Czech parent, but live in faraway countries and return here to make a connection with their heritage, while others found their way to the Czech language and culture through other means. When I found a classroom full of intermediate students singing a song typically sung in a pub, or around a campfire, it was obvious that these students are learning, and that they're having fun. In this week's Special, we introduce you to some of the people who