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Thirty years ago, in early June 1990, singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs performed at the summer cinema in Olomouc. The concert and surrounding tour – which could only really have happened at that specific moment in history – are still remembered with great fondness by many who were involved.

May 8 is the 75th anniversary of VE Day. It is also the anniversary of the death of Lawrence Saywell, the last Australian soldier killed in the war in Europe. Saywell, an escaped POW who joined partisans in the Czech countryside, has been decorated by the Czechs – and is still remembered in the tiny village where he met his tragic end.

The row over the recent removal of a statue of the Soviet Marshall Ivan Konev in Prague reminded us that the legacy of the recent past remains highly sensitive. Add to this the Russian-Polish debate over this month’s 80th anniversary of the Katyn massacre and you might be forgiven for thinking that Second World War never really ended. David Vaughan spoke to the Swedish-based Czech historian, Tomáš Sniegoň, who has made a close study of Katyn and other sites of Stalinist atrocities in the former Soviet Union. The example of Katyn, he says, reminds us just how hard it is to memorialize the traumatic and complex legacy of the war and the period of Stalinism.

Easter is the second biggest holiday in the Czech Republic after Christmas, observed in most homes around the country. This year however, the Easter celebrations will be much more humble than in previous years, as churches around the country have been forced to cancel masses due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

One of the more recent Easter traditions in the Czech Republic is a nation-wide public reading of the Bible. The event, first held in 2009, was initiated by the foundation Bible 21, and has since attracted thousands of people. I spoke to its founder, Alexandr Flek, a publisher, theologian and the chief translator of the modern Czech Bible version, Bible 21, about this year’s edition of the event but I first asked him about how it all started.

On the 29th of February 1920, the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia adopted a Constitution formally establishing a democratic republic with guaranteed equal rights for men and women – including the right to vote. We look back at the life’s work of suffragette Františka Plamínková, a feminist teacher and activist turned politician. Together with Milada Horáková (her protégé and eventual successor in the Senate) she helped ensure principles of equality enshrined in the Constitution were actually put into practice.

In 2011, UNESCO proclaimed February 13 as World Radio Day. It is a celebration of radio as a powerful medium and its role in serving diverse communities of listeners worldwide and promoting their interests. To mark the occasion several partner radio stations held a debate on diversity and how it is reflected in their work. The debate was hosted by Radio Canada International and involved journalists from Swiss.info, Radio Poland, Radio Romania International and Radio Prague International.

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 song, a campaign against noisy rockers with long hair, and some Cold War dramas – tales of defectors and spies. And we end with the strange, sad story of the Red Elvis. But first to the glowing dawn of the new regime in 1948.

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 Czech experience of living under Austrian domination. In the Czechoslovakia of the 1920s and 30s, interest in American jazz spread rapidly and Native American culture was romanticised in the so-called “tramping” movement. After the war communist Czechoslovakia was quick to point to discrimination and segregation in the United States and encouraged civil rights activists to visit the country. The voices of some of these visitors are preserved in the Czech Radio archives. And two decades after the fall of communism the first African American US President visited Prague. This long and fascinating connection is the subject of the ninth programme in our series looking at aspects of Czech and Czechoslovak history through the sound archives.

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 the archives we can map how the city liberated itself from the German occupiers. In the two years that follow, the radio archives give us a picture of a Czechoslovakia returning to some kind of normality, but in February 1948 everything changes. We tell the story as it was heard on the airwaves.

The late Václav Havel is famous around the world as a statesman and symbol of human rights and democracy. Rather less well-known is that Havel was also a very enthusiastic cook. This year many of the dissident-turned-president’s recipes were gathered in a rather delightful cookbook entitled Kančí na daňčím (Wild Boar on Venison).

As the year draws to a close all of us here at the English department of Radio Prague International would like to thank our devoted listeners the world over for their dedication to the station, for being with us and taking the time to drop us a line or write an email to share your views about what you found particularly interesting and what you’d like to hear more of on Radio Prague International.

A few years ago I spent an unforgettable day with Jaroslav and Alžběta Hofrichter. It was 2013, Jaroslav was 93, Alžběta 91, and they were living in sheltered accommodation for Second World War veterans at Prague’s Military Hospital. I was there to hear their life story, a tale of courage, resilience, a touch of luck and, above all, of the enduring power of love. The Hofrichters were known by their many friends as the “turtledoves”. Having met them I could see why. If there is an elixir for a happy marriage, they had found it. Jaroslav spent four years serving in Britain’s Royal Air Force along with some 2,000 fellow Czechs and Slovaks, nearly a quarter of whom never came home. At the end of the war, he returned to Czechoslovakia as a hero, but before long, his record with the RAF became a thorn in the side of the new communist regime. For most of the next four decades he and his wife Alžběta were treated with constant suspicion. Here, in their own words, is the story of Jaroslav and Alžběta – or Elizabeth – Hofrichter, first broadcast in December 2013. Both have since died, but they are remembered with great fondness.

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, but also recordings from abroad. Both the BBC and the government in exile in London were broadcasting to occupied Europe in Czech, at the same time informing the wider world about the fate of Czechoslovakia in English. Some of the extracts we’ll be hearing have become well known, but our archives also hold many surprises, rare recordings that give us unexpected insights into life during wartime.

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 survival as a democracy amid dictatorships. It was, as Jan Masaryk put it, an “experiment in vivisection”. The radio archives give a vivid picture of the consequences of that experiment, which was to last less than six months and end in occupation and eventually war.

Thirty years ago Czechs took to the streets to demonstrate for freedom and democracy, for the chance to speak their mind without reprisals, to vote in free elections and shape their own future. Today they are taking stock of the country’s successes and failures, of how far they have come along the road to a liberal democracy and market economy and whether the ideals of 1989 are still alive in people’s hearts and minds.

In the first episode of this two-part series we got to know Barbara Day, who first came from England to Prague in 1965 and whose life has been closely connected to this country ever since. She talked about her interest in Czechoslovak theatre, and her involvement with some notable Czech theatres over the last five decades. Azadeh Kangarani continues the story.

The date is Tuesday 19 October 1965 and we are in Prague. A 21-year-old British girl has just got off a train at the Art Nouveau building of Prague’s Main Station. Over half a century later, Barbara Day once again lives in the city, which has come to play a central role in her life.

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 reconstruct the events leading up to Munich almost day by day. They include insights from many different angles, not least the perspective of the German-speakers of Czechoslovakia, those who supported, but also those who opposed Hitler. The archives offer a sober warning of how easily a democratic state can be shattered through rumour, lies and propaganda.

Václav Havel’s relationship to the United States is the focus of the recently issued book Havel v Americe (Havel in America) by historian Rosamund Johnston and journalist Lenka Kabrhelová. Mainly based on Q&A-style interviews, it contains insights and anecdotes from Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, both presidents Bush and a host of others and is the first publication to concentrate on the subject. When I met the authors, I first asked Johnston about the genesis of Havel v Americe.