News

03-02-2012 17:38 CET | Daniela Lazarová

• The European Commission has threatened to halt all further EU subsidies to the Czech Education Ministry over a lack of transparency and mistakes in public orders.  
• The lower house of Parliament has started debating a controversial bill on the restitution of church property.  
• The Prague city council met for an emergency session on Friday to deal with problems relating to the cold snap.  
• Charities have come to the aid of needy people left in the lurch by the late distribution of social welfare benefits.  
• The Czech Republic has the highest number of tick-borne encephalitis cases in the EU.  

Czech Life

An Englishwoman who has lived in Prague for over six decades – ‘war bride’ Ivy Kovandová

04-02-2012 02:01 | Sarah Borufka

Ivy Kovandová is one of the few remaining so-called war brides in the Czech Republic. ‘War brides’ are Englishwomen who married Czechoslovak pilots or soldiers stationed in the UK during WWII – an estimated 10,000 soldiers and about 2,500 pilots from Czechoslovakia fought alongside the allies, and many of them married local women.  More

Mailbox

Mailbox

04-02-2012 02:01 | Pavla Horáková

This month in Mailbox we read from your letters of condolence on the death in December of the former president Václav Havel, we read from your feedback regarding Radio Prague's programmes and we quote from your answers to January's mystery Czech quiz question. Listeners/readers: Michael Fanderys, Jayanta Chakrabarty, Stephen Hrebenach, Steve Olear, Hans Verner Lollike, Mary Lou Krenek, Jaroslaw Jedrzejczak, Charles Konecny, Vladimir Gudzenko, Colin Law.  More

From the Archives

Paul Robeson in Prague: paying homage to Dvořák and socialism

04-02-2012 02:01 | David Vaughan

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.  More

Arts

New electronic music/dance album by Jitka Charvátová (aka. Ji) earns rave reviews

03-02-2012 16:22 | Jan Velinger

Anyone familiar with the Czech electronic and dance music scene will have come across the work of Jitka Charvátová, also known as Ji, the charismatic and talented former singer for cutting edge groups like Skyline and the late Milan Hlavsa’s 1990s band Fiction. Now Jitka has reset her career with a recently released but already highly-lauded new solo album called Feed My Lion, featuring 8-bit, electro pop and elements of hip hop.  More

Play: (07:34)

One on One

Documentary filmmaker Martin Dušek on why his native region continues to inspire him

30-01-2012 15:02 | Sarah Borufka

Martin Dušek, who often works with co-director Ondřej Provazník, is a two-time winner of the main prize at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, the Czech Republic’s most prestigious documentary award. His films “A Town Called Hermitage” and “Coal in the Soul” were both shot in the former Sudetenland in North Bohemia, a border region whose Sudeten German inhabitants were expelled from Czechoslovakia after the war. Martin Dušek ’s latest film deals with his own Sudeten German heritage – in a humorous and provocative way. More

Play: (12:30)

Sunday Music Show

Hard rock headliners Kabát

29-01-2012 02:01 | Jan Velinger

In today’s programme we feature music by the hard rock and thrashmetal group Kabát, who have left a Godzilla-sized footprint on the Czech music scene. To date, the band headed by charismatic frontman Pepa Vojtek, has sold hundreds of thousands of albums and remains a major draw for fans of heavier music. More

Spotlight

Karlín – Prague’s first suburb

28-01-2012 | Christian Falvey

Prague’s leafy central suburb of Karlín may best be known outside of the Czech Republic for the devastating floods that laid ruin to it in 2002, but much of the world has been using the machines and products born of Karlín factories for more than a hundred years and aside from that it is also Prague’s oldest suburb – a point recalled by an exhibition being held this year at the City Museum in Prague that was created by historian Dr. Zdeněk Míka:  More

Play: (07:33)