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Stories of the victims of the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia are set to be released on Monday by the NGO Post Bellum, which has been publishing the testimonies of witnesses to modern Czech history for nearly 15 years. Entitled Stories of Heroes of the 20th century, the book brings more then 30 testimonies which have not been yet available in the audio archive on the NGO`s website. Some of them have already been released as part of the regular Czech Radio show Stories of the 20th Century. The book will be suitable for children from the age of 13.

Today in Mailbox: Response to Radio Prague's special 80th anniversary broadcast, monthly listener's quiz. Listeners/readers quoted: Robert LaRose, Alan Holder, Claes Olsson, Vladimir Gudzenko, Chun-quan Meng, Hans Verner Lollike, Radhakrishna Pillai, Jayanta Chakrabarty.

The Supreme Administrative Court has issued a ruling that could close the busy south-western section of the Prague ring road and affect other roads that have not yet received final building approval, Czech Radio reported on Tuesday. The court upheld a complaint from locals who protested against the length of the trial operation on the south-western section of the Prague ring road, with appropriate noise barriers still not in place, ruling that a trial operation longer than three years was excessive. The south-western section of the Prague ring road went into operation in 2010 and still lacks final building approval due to a number of serious technical defects. The Road Management Authority is currently reviewing the impact of the ruling on this and other roads.

Radio Prague is on Wednesday celebrating the 80th anniversary of its first, shortwave broadcast, which was from outside Pardubice in East Bohemia on 31 August 1936. In connection with the anniversary the Foreign Czech of the Year Award, selected by Radio Prague and fellow Czech Radio station Vltava, was presented to doctor Karel Pacák. Radio Prague has six language sections, each of which produce a half-hour programme daily.

In this, the last programme in our series to mark Radio Prague’s 80th birthday, we travel eastwards looking at links between India and Czechoslovakia both before and after the Second World War as captured in our archives. In the 1920s and 30s cultural links were strong, despite the huge differences and distance between the two countries, and many of these links survived even in the time of the Cold War. David Vaughan has more.

A memorial service at the Czech Radio building on Prague’s Vinohradská St. on Sunday morning commemorated the 48th invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops. The then Czechoslovak Radio building saw some of the bloodiest clashes after tanks rolled into the country on the night of August 20 and 21 1968 to quell the Prague Spring reform movement. Among the speakers at Sunday’s ceremony was MP Karel Schwarzenberg, who said it was not only important to honour the fallen heroes of that time – it was necessary to fight for the freedom of speech in all eras. Other participants included the ministers of human rights and culture, Jiří Dienstbier and Daniel Herman. Mr. Dienstbier said Russia today was pursuing a policy of limiting the sovereignty of other states and that the 1968 invasion showed that the best route for a country like the Czech Republic was cooperation within Europe.

This week in our series to mark Radio Prague’s 80th birthday we feature a recording made in the summer of 1946, when Radio Prague was exactly ten years old. A. J. P. Taylor was one of the best known and respected historians of mid-twentieth century Britain, and on a visit to Czechoslovakia he predicted a future for the country that would combine pluralist, parliamentary democracy with communism. David Vaughan has more.

The film Code Name Holec (Krycí jméno Holec) set against the backdrop of the August 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia will be released in Czech cinemas in September, a spokesperson for the distributors said on Tuesday. The movie is based on a short story by Jan Němec and also takes place in Vienna. A number of scenes were shot around the Czech Radio building in Vinohrady, where some of the most intense fighting took place in 1968.

During the EU referendum debate in Britain the presence of so-called “migrant” workers from Central and Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic, was one of the central topics. But we heard rather less about the tens of thousands of Czechs, Slovaks and, above all, Poles, who came to Britain nearly eighty years ago during World War II. In today’s language they might also be categorized as migrants, quite possibly illegal migrants, given the many complex paths that led them to Britain. They came to fight in the British armed forces and their contribution

In the first part of this series two weeks ago, we went back to 1932 with a recording of memories of Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk, the American wife of Czechoslovakia’s first president. A year later the political landscape of Europe and changed completely. Hitler had come to power in Germany, and suddenly Czechoslovakia’s position in Europe seemed perilous. It was in this atmosphere that Radio Prague was launched as the international service of Czechoslovak Radio in 1936. The aim was to counter German propaganda and remind the western democracies