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Radim Hladík is regarded as one of the greatest Czech guitar players – if not the greatest – of the 1960s generation, the local equivalent of an Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck. In this special programme, the musician looks back over a colourful career spanning five decades.

In this programme two quite exceptional people tell their own story. It is a tale of courage, resilience and a touch of luck, but above all of the enduring power of love. Jaroslav and Alžběta Hofrichter have been married for well over half a century. Their friends call them the “turtledoves” and when you meet them it is not hard to see why. At 93 and 91 respectively, Jaroslav and Alžběta are still very much in love and if there is an elixir for happiness, they seem to have found it. This is remarkable in itself, but what makes their story the more

Ever since Czech fairy tales were first adapted into feature films more than 60 years ago, watching them on TV has become an essential part of Czech Christmas. Some experts even believe the medium in fact saved the genre as we know it. So what are the main ingredients of Czech fairy tales? Did communism affected them at all? And is there such a thing as a typical Czech fairy tale? Find out more our special Christmas Eve programme.

Lubomír Dorůžka, who sadly died on Monday at the age of 89, was one of the all-time great Czech music writers. He started out during WWII, producing a clandestine magazine on his greatest passion, jazz, a genre that was also later frowned upon by the Communists. However, in the relatively liberal 1960s Mr. Dorůžka was able to edit music magazines and play a very active role in international jazz organisations. What’s more, he was also a renowned translator of American and British authors – and as a young man did many translations with his lifelong

Prague this week hosted the annual USA and European Union Days conference where several prominent international and Czech figures discussed transatlantic cooperation and the role of both the US and the EU in international affairs. Among the keynote speakers this year was the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak; I sat down with Mr Barak to discuss, among other issues, and the perils of the US approach to the Arab Spring, the recent deal on Iran’s nuclear programme, and why the West should not treat Russia as an enemy.

Welcome to our special extended programme marking the October 28th national holiday in the Czech Republic. Ninety-five years ago today, Czechoslovakia declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, becoming an independent state. The so-called First Republic thus came into being, at first under much celebrated president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and subsequently Edvard Beneš, who would witness the country’s dismemberment in 1938 under the Munich Agreement. Although Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia

When Czechoslovakia’s President-in-exile Edvard Beneš spoke in the English industrial city of Stoke-on-Trent on 6 September 1942, it was a turning point in the propaganda war with Germany. This was three months after the Nazis had destroyed the village of Lidice near Prague; many of the men who were murdered were miners or steel workers and in Britain the massacre led to a wave of solidarity with the victims, most markedly among miners. The “Lidice Shall Live” movement that was born in Stoke-on-Trent became the focus of this solidarity, initiated

Our special broadcast for Saints Cyril and Methodius Day explores a famous musical homage to the two missionaries and their legacy, Leoš Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass.

While thousands of Westerners flocked to Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, Don Sparling experienced those dramatic events at first hand. In the second part of a two-part interview, he discusses, among other things, that intoxicating period and the changes that followed.

Few if any Westerners have been living in this part of the world for as long as Don Sparling. Indeed, the Canadian-born academic came to Czechoslovakia in March 1969, just seven months after the Soviet invasion that crushed the Prague Spring movement. He has been here ever since, for the most part living in Brno, where he eventually became head of the English Department at Masaryk University.