Abstract
In October, the Czech playwright Václav Havel received a sentence of 14 months, suspended for three years, at the end of a trial at which he and three other defendants (see p.68) were accused of ‘subversion of the Republic’ for having sent banned manuscripts out of the country for publication abroad.
The day after the trial ended the BBC in London showed part of an interview with Havel, filmed clandestinely in Czechoslovakia, in which the writer discussed his arrest the previous January, his feelings about his four-month-long detention, and the imminent court case; he also gave his views on Charter 77, of which he was one of the three spokesmen when the document was first made public in January of last year.
The following is the full text of the interview.