History | Topic Archive

If any country in the world is home to the Christmas carol, it has to be the Czech Republic. The tradition of carolling goes back centuries, and Czech Christmas music is a wonderfully rich mixture of spiritual, secular, classical and folk traditions. So for this special programme, we take you on a journey into the world of Czech Christmas music. In order to enjoy this programme fully, you need to hear the music. Just click on the “listen” icon. But even if you are not able to listen, you can read a transcript of part of my interview with a person

This year, some historians contend, marks exactly 1,100 years since the birth of St. Wenceslas, the Czech king and chief patron of the Czech lands. To celebrate this important anniversary, the National Gallery together with the Prague Archbishopric, organised a special exhibition at St Agnes’ Convent in Prague entitled Svatý Václav – ochránce české země or King Wenceslas – the Patron of the Czech lands.

With Christmas just round the corner, we break our chronological journey through the archives this week to go back to Christmas 1945. We’re in Kročehlavy, a suburb of the industrial town of Kladno near Prague. This was home to the survivors of one of the horrors of the wartime occupation, the murder in June 1942 of all the men and most of the children from the nearby village of Lidice. Only one Lidice family had survived the massacre intact: Josef Horák was one of two young pilots from the village who had fled at the beginning of the occupation,

“One Century of Czech Ice Hockey” is the title of an exhibition which has just opened at Prague’s National Museum. It features photographs and documents from the history of the sport in this country, as well as valuable medals, jerseys and other memorabilia.

Marking five decades since the death of the great Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů in 1959, a major international project entitled Martinů Revisited was officially launched on Thursday night with a concert at Prague’s Rudolfinum. It features scores of events, both in the Czech Republic and further afield, and will run for exactly two years, until December 12, 2010.

By the mid 1960s political control over many aspects of cultural and social life in Czechoslovakia had relaxed considerably. This was the height of the “New Wave” in Czechoslovak cinema, in theatre socialist realism had long gone out of fashion and in music the swinging sixties were well under way. But it was not just through the music it was playing that Czechoslovak Radio tried to keep pace with the changes. One programme that broke the traditional mould was launched in 1966 and was called “The 33 Questions of Marcel Proust”. These were questions

You are not very likely to wander into Svitavy by chance. Located on both the major road and railway line connecting Moravia and eastern Bohemia, for most people Svitavy is just a name on their itinerary. But if you do come and take a closer look, you’ll find a little town proud of its past and working for a better future. Once an important town for Moravia’s textile industry, re-populated after the expulsion of Svitavy’s German speaking inhabitants, it only recently showed its pride in perhaps its most famous native personality – Oskar

2008 has been a year of anniversaries linked to milestone events which changed the course of Czech history – 1968, 1948 and 1938. In those years, many Czechs left their country due to the deteriorating political situation – an imminent war, a communist takeover and a Soviet-led invasion. Our guest in this edition of One on One is Joseph Kohn, a native of Prague, who left Czechoslovakia in 1938, and who is now a professor of mathematics at Princeton University in the United States.

Today we disclose the identity of November’s mystery Czech and announce the names of the four listeners who will receive small prizes for their correct answers. Listeners quoted: Imo Obong Umana, Mogire Machuki, Prasanta Kumar Padmapati, Henk Poortvliet, Hans Verner Lollike, Jana Vaculik, K.Thiagarajan, Francesco Reda and Irena Knos, Krzysztof Borski, Constantin Liviu Viorel, Colin Law, Christine Takaguchi-Coates, Christopher Larkosh, Mark Schiefelbein, Charles Konecny.

In last week’s From the Archives we featured Martin Luther King, interviewed by Czechoslovak Radio in 1963. But Dr King was not the first civil rights campaigner to address Czech and Slovak radio listeners. Four years earlier, in June 1959, Paul Robeson came to Prague, to take part in an international left-wing cultural congress. Robeson was a man of many talents – singer, actor, athlete, writer and civil rights activist. He never concealed his sympathies with the communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc, and his political views – combined with the