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Every year hundreds of Czech students start university in the UK, with some opting for schools in the capital. But what do they find when they arrive in London? And how does their university experience compare to what they might get at home? To discuss those issues and more, I caught up with two Czech students in the British capital, both of whom had attended Prague’s English College: Veronika Pehe, who is completing a PhD at the School of Slavonic Studies at University College London; and Kryštof Vosátka, who is doing a teacher training course

Since the fall of communism, the Czech Communist party has well established itself on the Czech political scene. It has a stable support base, and since 1990 has not been voted out of the lower house. What is the Communist Party’s appeal for Czech voters? What is its role in the country’s political system? And what are the outlooks for the Czech Communist movement?

In this special programme on Czech Independence Day I am joined by noted historian Jan Rychlík, and we will also be hearing from Jan Hartl of the STEM polling agency. We will examine the influence of foreigners and minority groups in the Czech lands throughout history and try to gain a greater understanding of contemporary Czech attitudes in this regard.

Hello and welcome to a special programme marking Czech Statehood day, which is also the feast day of St. Wenceslas. I am joined for a look at the life of St. Wenceslas – or St. Václav – by Tomáš Petráček, who is a theologian, priest, religious historian, and author with a diocese in the Czech city of Hradec Králové.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton began giving underground seminars at the homes of Czechoslovak dissidents in the late 1970s. He was eventually thrown out of the communist state but the clandestine network he contributed to remained in place until the Velvet Revolution, when several of its “graduates” helped shape the new democracy.

We have often drawn from Czech Radio’s sound archives in our broadcasts, as they make up one of the richest radio archives in the world, offering insight into the history of this country going back well over eighty years. In the last four years I have been working with journalism students from the Anglo-American University in Prague to explore some of the recordings lying long forgotten in the archives. This year a group of my students came across a moving and unusual – even experimental – drama documentary made in 1967 by the English Section of

On July 6th, it will be 600 years since the death of Jan Hus, the celebrated priest and reformer, who was burned at the stake for heresy against the Catholic Church. In this programme, Zdeněk Uhlíř of the historical and musical collections section of the Czech National Library, and also Vlasta Urbánková, a guide at the Bethlehem Chapel where Hus preached, will help to piece together what we know about the man, his beliefs, and some of the myths surrounding this “Greatest Czech”.

In this Special, we pay tribute to Sir Nicholas Winton, the Briton who helped save the lives of 669 children by arranging their evacuation from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. Sir Nicholas died on Wednesday at his home in the UK at the age of 106. The original story was produced by Rosie Johnston in 2009, when the journey of the original kinderstransports from Prague to London was re-enacted.

Hello and welcome to a special programme marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Joining me in the studio today is noted historian and author Professor Jan Rychlík. Rather than simply do the obvious and discuss the end of World War II, I thought it might be interesting to focus on the efforts of the Czech resistance throughout the duration of the war.

When many of his friends were starting university, Pavel Vošický was getting a different sort of education, hearing the stories of political prisoners of various stripes in some of the most notorious jails in communist Czechoslovakia. Barely out of his teens, Vošický had been found guilty of sedition while on military service.