Vaclav Havel

Engrossing and beguiling, the Czech capital offers visitors a glimpse of its rich and glorious past

Pat Leahy: politics has been described as a combination of high purpose and low cunning

Billionaire election winner Babis and pro-Russian president Zeman alarm many Czechs

Tens of thousands expected to march amid rising European populism and xenophobia

All peoples, and that includes the people of Catalonia; have the right of self-determination.

Chinese writer’s gift was an ability to think – and to speak – for himself

Chinese dissident’s last words to his wife Liu Xia were ‘Live on well’

Vaclav Havel provided a stirring example of leadership in challenging times, whether picking generals or asking citizens to ‘live in the truth’

Americans need to learn lessons from Europe’s communist past

Attack on centre that helps refugees reflects vitriol in nation’s debate on refugee crisis

Mary Robinson pushed the office ‘as far as the wall and peeped over, but didn’t cross it’

Tapestry unveiled depicting island of Manhattan as yellow submarine piloted by Lennon

Nicholas Winton: May 19th, 1909 – July 1st, 2015

All the latest deals and travel new from Fionn Davenport, including a hotel guide to Prague, Watergate hotel reinvented and a 60-secod guide to Orlando, Florida.

Big rallies in Hungary and Czech Republic bemoan leaders’ soft stance on Russia

The Berlin Wall’s fall was a death knell for a Soviet bloc in which the first fissures had appeared elsewhere

Conversations turn Beckettian when this festival of all things tragicomic doesn’t turn out as planned. Could it be any other way?

Sean Doran wants to make Happy Days a ‘destination festival’, turning Enniskillen, where the playwright and novelist went to school, into a Mecca for his fans

Henry V

Ivan Klíma was clearly a dissident. But then the Czech writer was too cautious to sign Charter 77, and now he is oddly accepting of Václav Havel

The tribute to Heaney, which was paid for by a group of the poet’s admirers, including Paul Simon and Bono, is bringing colour to Dublin airport

Opinion: Survey of attitudes seems to indicate that we are becoming more tolerant of ‘bad language’

At a grand dinner many years ago, Heaney made a nice gesture in honour of my father, who had recently died

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart, wrote Yeats. The miracle of Nelson Mandela is that 27 years of imprisonment did not harden his soul

The miracle of Mandela is that 27 years of imprisonment did not harden his soul

Opinion: Vaclav Havel taught us the useful lesson of the power of the powerless

A huge number of productions and premieres were stuffed into the Enniskillen festival, many of them performed in intriguing locations

So says Happy Days festival director Seán Doran of Beckett. Doran’s aim is to break new ground, and with the celebration of the playwright in Enniskillen he has pulled that off