Jan Stránský

Jan was born in 1913 in Brno, in the same house where the family paper Lidové noviny was then printed. Like his grandfather and father, he studied law at Charles University in Prague, after which he became the correspondent for Lidové noviny in Vienna and then in London.

During WWII, Jan first fought with the Czechoslovak army in France, then became head of the office of the Czechoslovak premier of the government-in-exile in London. His personal diary, in which he recorded all the discussions and meetings of the Czechoslovak government in exile, is a unique and the only record of that time. After the war, Jan became a member of the National Assembly for the National Socialist Party. In 1948 Jan again dramatically fled to the West, where, along with his father, he wrote and broadcast talks in the BBC to the Czechoslovak nation. In 1951 he co-founded the Czech Desk of Radio Free Europe in Munich with Pavel Tigrid, after which, along with Ferdinand Peroutka, the country’s leading journalist, he moved to New York, where he worked as head and then as adviser to the Free Europe press service.