Thirty years ago the Velvet Revolution brought a playwright to power. Václav Havel continued (figuratively) to ‘stride the boards’ on a new stage. He was in a new real-life role: as his country’s anti-Communist pro-democracy President.

By Paul Martin

It was to be a strange but enlightening encounter. Our translator, our video cameraman, our producer and I had walked up a staircase to a nondescript apartment in a building close to the Vltava River in the centre of the Czech capital Prague.