ROB CAMERON

The Czech lower house is to begin debating a bill to introduce same-sex marriage. If successful, the Czech Republic would become the first country in the former eastern bloc to allow gay people to marry – similar legislation was introduced in Slovenia, but was later overturned in a referendum. However even some prominent gay politicians are against.

The anniversary of the Velvet Revolution on November 17th 1989 is now a national holiday. It’s an opportunity to look back on a defining moment and take the temperature of Czech (and Slovak) society. For the 20th anniversary, those who were at the heart of the revolution – including the shy playwright who became president – shared their memories and thoughts.

Václav Havel died at his country home – Hrádeček – on the morning of Sunday, December 18th, 2011. He’d appeared a few months previously at the unveiling of a statue to Woodrow Wilson, looking frail and gaunt. However his death – at the age of 75 – still came as a great shock. Havel’s state funeral five days later was a momentous and immensely moving experience.

Holidays can expose the traveller to cultures, languages and adventures they would never have experienced at home. Trying to recreate them many years later however can be a bit of a challenge. In the summer of 2012, I returned to the idyllic town of Vimperk in South Bohemia – the place where twenty years previously I’d decided to start a new life.

A company has started offering whistle-stop tours of ostentatious villas, over-budget public construction projects and the echoey corridors of local government to highlight the problem of rampant corruption. “Corruption is not just money spent in the wrong way. Corruption is trust misused,” said Petr Sourek, founder of ‘Corrupt Tour’ – the world’s first corruption tour agency.

Events are being held in the Czech capital Prague to mark the 700th anniversary of the birth of Charles IV, who was King of Bohemia and then Holy Roman Emperor. The events – taking place at a number of famous landmarks in the city which bear his name – will be attended by a distant descendant, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg.

The assassination of senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík in 1942 was one of the outstanding feats of daring in World War Two. The killing led to terrible reprisals, not least for the pair themselves, who were surrounded and killed by the Germans. But one question has long troubled historians: where are their bodies?

Czech counter-intelligence has issued stark warnings of intensified espionage activity by Russia and China. Both countries are pursuing a long-term strategy of undermining the West, according to the Security Information Service (BIS). Moscow has continued its hybrid warfare strategy to gain influence over this EU and Nato member, it says.

For a quarter of a century tourists and locals passing through the bottom of Prague’s Wenceslas Square were stepping unaware on Jewish gravestones. They were looted from abandoned cemeteries in the 1980s and cut up to make cobbles. The truth about the stones came to light thanks to the head of Prague’s Jewish Museum – who slipped a few into his pocket as a young man.

For decades, archaeologists have grappled with the identity of a 10th-Century skeleton discovered at Prague Castle. The remains were exploited by both the Nazis and Soviets for ideological purposes, claiming it as proof of a pre-existing Germanic – or Slavic – presence. But attempts to pin a clear ethnic label on a 1,000-year-old corpse perhaps reveal more about us than him.

A random face in a documentary about the Prague Spring led to a wild goose chase to track down its owner. It belonged to Zdeněk ‘Sid’ Kučera, a jazz trumpeter and singer whose band was filmed performing Georgie Fame’s Bonnie and Clyde in a Prague club. Sid emigrated not long after the Soviet tanks arrived – but finally got in touch from his adopted home in Switzerland.

Catastrophic floods have swept through Central Europe, leading to dozens of deaths and widespread destruction of houses and infrastructure. In the Czech Republic, the worst flooding has been in central and eastern parts of the country, especially North Moravia, where around a dozen people have lost their lives. Towns such as Krnov and Jeseník have been completely cut off.