The Czech Republic has links with India going back to long before both countries won independence. In this programme, in our occasional series In Their Own Words, we draw from our archives to look at Czech-Indian connections – through music, l

The sounds of 1968 and 1969: Jan Palach and the abnormality of normalization

Dec 2nd, 2023 29m 19s

This is the second of two special programmes in our series In Their Own Words, bringing the dramatic events of 1968 and 1969 in Czechoslovakia to life through the radio archives. Last week we ended a few days just after the Soviet-led invasion

Bringing to life the hopes and fears of 1968 through sound

Nov 25th, 2023 27m 33s

The Czech Radio sound archives are among the richest in the world and through them we can travel in time to many moments in Czech and Czechoslovak history. This is the first of two special programmes in our series In Their Own Words that take

Stars as Red as the Morning Sky: The Cold War in Czechoslovakia

Jan 31st, 2020 27m 59s

In this programme, the last in the current series looking at Czech history through the archives, we get a flavour of the Cold War. The archives throw up some curious stories: a man in love with a drill, a Czechoslovak cosmonaut celebrated in s

Czechs and the American Civil Rights Movement

Jan 17th, 2020 29m 3s

Czech interest in African American culture goes back to the 19th century. When Antonín Dvořák spent three years in the United States in the 1890s he explored African American and Native American musical traditions, seeing parallels with the Cz

1945-1948: From liberation to Stalinism

Jan 3rd, 2020 29m 24s

In this programme, the eighth in our series mapping this country’s history through the radio archives, we start with the dramatic events of the last days of the war in Prague. The radio played a major role in the Prague Uprising, and through t

War and Occupation: A black crow spreads its wings over Prague

Dec 6th, 2019 28m 3s

The Czech Radio archives include many recordings from the time of World War II. They come from both sides: propaganda from within occupied Bohemia and Moravia aimed at intimidating the population and bullying them into supporting the Reich, bu

An Experiment in Vivisection: Czechoslovakia’s Second Republic 1938-1939

Nov 22nd, 2019 21m 6s

As a result of the Munich Agreement of September 1938, Czechoslovakia ended up losing 30% of its territory, a third of its population and the greater part of its industry and raw materials. Few people had much faith in the country’s long-term

Czechs and Germans in 1930s Czechoslovakia: a complex picture

Nov 8th, 2019 29m 47s

The Czech Radio archives give us a rich and nuanced picture of the months leading up to the Munich Agreement of September 1938 that resulted in Nazi Germany annexing huge areas of Czechoslovakia. So many recordings survive that we can reconstr

Jazz, traffic lights and the timeless beauty of Ruthenia: a taste of Czechoslovakia between the wars

Oct 25th, 2019 20m

In this episode I use the radio archives to evoke the atmosphere of Czechoslovakia during the First Republic of the 1920s and 30s. The recordings that survive offer a fragmentary picture, but they capture something of the spirit of the time, f

Europe’s first ever live football commentary and other unforgettable Czech sporting moments

Oct 11th, 2019 27m 21s

Sport has always played a big role in Czech life. At the time of the national revival in the 19th century, the Sokol gymnastics movement was founded on the idea that a healthy body was a recipe not only for a healthy mind, but also for a civil

The feminist legacy of Charlotte and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Sep 27th, 2019 15m 23s

In the first of this series we heard the voice of Czechoslovakia’s first President, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. His wife Charlotte was American, and thanks to her influence Tomáš became a champion of feminism. Charlotte went on to inspire many wom

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk: An inspiration for our own time

Sep 13th, 2019 19m 27s

We start this series with one of the great European democrats of the 20th century, Czechoslovakia’s first president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Born in 1850, he was already in his late sixties when he became president in November 1918. He took ins

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