Isabel Stainsby is the translator of a gripping memoir by Roma journalist Patrik Banga, which has just been launched in English under the title The True Way Out. Stainsby, who lives in Scotland, first developed an interest in the Czech language – and this country – in her teens. We discussed her work as a translator, love of Czech castles and more after the presentation of the book in Prague.

No foreigner can have had such an impact on Prague in the modern era as Serge Borenstein. Indeed in three and a half decades, the Belgian-born developer has been behind new constructions totalling a remarkable half a million square metres in and around the capital. His most notable projects have been in Karlín, a district he has almost single-handedly transformed with a series of gleaming office buildings. And it was at Borenstein’s offices there that we spoke recently.

Matt Welch was among the first wave of young Westerners who flooded into Prague in the early 1990s. Today a prominent journalist and commentator in his native US, back then he was one of the founders of Prognosis, Czechoslovakia’s first English-language newspaper. And Welch shared lots of colourful recollections of that formative period of his life from his study in New York.

Dr. Tomáš Páleníček is a leading Czech proponent of the use of psychedelics in certain kinds of psychiatric treatment. The psychiatrist and several colleagues recently appeared in a documentary named Doctor on a Trip that followed them to the Amazon rainforest, where they mapped brain activity during ceremonies centred on ayahuasca, a traditional hallucinogenic drink. I spoke to Páleníček at our Prague studios.

Jiří Pehe is one of Czechia’s best-known political scientists, regularly sharing his insights with domestic and international media. But his own story is also noteworthy. After a dramatic 1981 escape to the West, he made a new life in the US. Following the fall of communism he returned to his native country and became a close advisor to President Václav Havel. Pehe then became director of New York University Prague, a position he is about to retire from after more than a quarter of a century.

Among the many warm tributes to Jiří Bartoška, who passed away last week at 78, has been one published by Variety from journalist Steven Gaydos. The Czech actor took the reins at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1994 and that was also the first edition for Gaydos, who subsequently watched Bartoška and his team turn a moribund event into the vibrant, internationally renowned celebration of cinema it is today.

Writer and artist Martina Skála grew up in Prague’s picturesque Malá Strana district before leaving for France in the mid-1980s and eventually settling in California. Skála, who studied history and set design, has also had an unusually broad range of jobs, from acting as an advisor to the female leads on The Unbearable Lightness of Being to literally dancing with horses.

Antonín Kokeš is the man behind Antonínovo pekařství, a successful chain of bakeries. The Moravian-born entrepreneur is also the owner of Albi, a company best-known for the board games that can be found in many Czech homes. We discussed both those businesses and much more at Kokeš’s latest venture, a new branch of Antonín’s Bakery due to open on May 1 in a grand building on Prague’s Náměstí Míru.

Helena Lukas, daughter of the major Czech photographer Jan Lukas, escaped to the West with her family in the mid-1960s. In New York the Lukases were part of a Czech cultural elite in exile that included such names as Jiří Voskovec, Ferdinand Peroutka and Alexander Hackenschmied. Helena Lukas is currently in Czechia preparing an exhibition of her father’s work that will open in the town of Dobrovice next weekend.