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, literature, g

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 on 21 Augus

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 us back to t

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 campa

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

In this programme, the eighth in our series mapping this countrys 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

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 recor

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

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 eve

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, from Prague’s