Spirit of reform
Sunday Feature: Tony Harrison’s Prague Spring RADIO Radio 3 Scheduled for Sunday 8 July
In the mid-1960s, poet Tony Harrison lived and taught in Prague. These were years when a spirit of reform was in the air in the lead-up to the ‘Prague Spring’.
It was an era that came back to life for Harrison when he was clearing out his attic and came across cartoons by Jirˆí Jirásek – images of all-hearing giant ears and guillotines slicing pencils – that Harrison had smuggled out of Czechoslovakia. Five decades on, Harrison returns to Prague to meet Jirásek and other Czech friends from the 1960s.