On 3 November the Frontline Club hosted an event organised by the Czech Centre London, the insight with Michael Žantovský was part of the ‘Made in Prague’ festival season. Michael Žantovský, who is the current Czech Ambassador to the Court of St James, was discussing his new book called Havel: A Life. 

Václav Havel was elected as President of Czechoslovakia in December of 1989 after 41 years of communist rule. His political activities during the communist regime brought him under the surveillance of the secret police and led to multiple prison stints, including a four-year incarceration between 1979 and 1983. His Civic Forum Party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution, and Havel himself was instrumental in dismantling the Warsaw Pact and expanding NATO eastwards.

In January 1990, Žantovský served as Havel’s spokesman, press secretary and advisor. It was in this capacity that he was able to address a sold out Frontline Club about his lifelong friend. Not only could Žantovský provide a unique perspective on Havel as a statesman, but also as a playwright, essayist, dissident and philosopher. Alongside Žantovský sat Edward Lucas, senior editor at The Economist, and he began the questioning around the issue of Havel’s death in 2011 and what effect that had.

“It brought back many a memory and it bought back the importance of the man,” Žantovský said. “It was not quite self evident at the time [because] the last few years of Havel’s life were years of personal decline and also of some public amnesia of sorts and one could be forgiven for having the impression that he was no longer relevant to the events of the day . . . and then he died and it came as a shock to so many people and the public response was so emotional, so spontaneous and so massive that all of a sudden people realised what he meant for history, what he meant for the Czech nation and for the Slovak nation as well and some of us, including myself, realised what he meant to me personally.”

The interview then led us through Havel’s early life as a playwright and focused particularly on Havel’s 1963 play, The Garden Party, which Žantovský commented, “was an excellent metaphor for the Communist system” as it focused upon a “bureaucratic, heartless system which is only concerned with its own self preservation and with the internal struggles and games that it plays”.

Conversation then zoned in upon Havel’s political dissidence to which Lucas asked about Havel’s role in “nurturing the sentiment of independent thought”. Žantovský replied:

“Havel for a time actually went along with the way. He moved out of Prague with Olga, he stayed . . . in his country house, and he was not – he was watched – but he was not overly bothered as long as he stayed where he was . . . as long as you were not publicly active they, the system, did not necessarily hold it against you, you know, they would let you live a nice life if you didn’t bother them.”

Žantovský then went on to describe a series of events which led to the conclusion, in Havel’s mind that, “If the situation is to change he couldn’t wait for the other side to make the first move, he would have to make the first move.”

The rest of the interview covered topics such as his unconventional marriage, the chaos surrounding the abrupt fall of the Berlin wall, and the common misconceptions surrounding Havel’s character. When the floor was opened to for the question and answer session, Žantovský fielded numerous questions about Havel and his relationship with Václav Klaus. Žantovský replied:

“Again [there is] this stereotype that Václav Havel and Václav Klaus were antagonists who were at loggerheads throughout their political lives and couldn’t get along. I think it shows that, you know, for all their differences and they had significant differences and I comment on a couple of those, they were real politicians, and as politicians they both realised at certain points they couldn’t get some things done without each other. . . . They were able to forget about their differences and do the important things together.”

You can order a copy of Michael Žantovský’s book Havel: A Life here.

Watch and listen to the talk here:

The rise of the Islamic State (IS) has once again thrown into question how governments deal with the threat of terrorist organisations. Around the world governments consistently proclaim that they will never ‘negotiate with evil’. And yet is the public rhetoric always in line with what is actually going on behind closed doors?

Jonathan Powell has spent nearly two decades mediating between governments and terrorist organisations. In his new book Talking to Terrorists, he argues that no conflict – however bloody, ancient or difficult – is insoluble.

He will be joining us in conversation with roving foreign correspondent for The Times, Anthony Loyd, to reflect on the current situation with IS and how governments have reacted, both on the public stage and behind closed doors. Looking back on his own experience he will be discussing how we can use the lessons of a history of clandestine communication.

Jonathan Powell has spent half a lifetime talking to people and organisations labelled as terrorists. He runs Inter Mediate, a London-based charity for negotiation and mediation that focuses on the most difficult, complex and dangerous conflicts, where other organisations are unable to operate. In 1997 he met Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and became instrumental in negotiating peace in Northern Ireland. In 2008 he suggested publicly that western governments should open talks with the Taliban, Hamas and al-Qaeda. Today, he works on different armed conflicts around the world and is the UK Prime Minister’s special envoy to Libya. He is the author of two books, Great Hatred, Little Room and The New Machiavelli.

Kathy Eldon is a journalist, activist, and author who has transformed a personal tragedy into a positive force for good. She spoke at the Frontline Club on 5 November about her son, Dan Eldon, a 22-year-old photojournalist who was one of four journalists killed in Somalia on the 12 July 1993. The group were beaten and stoned to death by an angry mob while covering the US bombing of a building in Mogadishu. For the last 20 years, through campaigning and filmmaking, Kathy Eldon and her daughter Amy Eldon Turteltaub have kept Dan’s memory alive and celebrated his life. They set up the Creative Visions Foundation, to support activists who use media and the arts to create social impact.  Twenty years after his death, she has published her memoir In the Heart of Life: A Memoir which has just been released.

John Owen, chairman of the Frontline Club, who also chaired the event, described how he first became aware of Eldon when she was speaking at the journalists’ memorial in Washington DC where her son was being commemorated and his name etched into the glass and iron memorial sculpture. Owen recalled how he watched the video of her speech with a hardened veteran editor who had seen many disturbing images in his. They listened to Eldon‘s tribute to her son, affirming her belief that his death had not been in vain, she said on that day:

“Let our souls all be reborn today, dedicated above all to the communication of inspiration and truth.”

The entire audience [at the memorial] was in tears and Owen said that he and his colleague both wept in that editing suite. Mark Wood, the then chief executive of Reuters was in the audience and Owen praised his role in 1993 saying:

“He was a brilliant example of a how a caring news executive responds to the death of a freelancer. A very important distinction, a freelancer.”

He continued:

“We are here at the Frontline Club. Vaughan Smith created this place to honour journalists, especially freelance journalists who have given their lives to pursuing the news.  In the Frontline Club itself as you go in to the members’ room you see the pictures of his colleagues who have lost their lives… Why this place matters is because the families and friends can come to this place and know that their lives were not in vain. That they are remembered and celebrated.”

At the @frontlineclub hearing @kathyeldon speak on the legacy of her son dan and the power of story telling as creative activism #inspiring

— Lisa Anderson (@lisaandersonaa) November 5, 2013

Owen pointed out Robin Scott in the audience, the father of Roddy Scott a freelance journalist killed on the front line whilst covering the war in Chechnya. Robin and his wife Stina have also set up a foundation in their son’s memory to help educate the children of a neglected Chechen refugee community in the Pankisi Gorge, North Georgia. This was an example, of the sort of community that exists at the Frontline Club, which goes well beyond talking about the news.

Eldon read moving excerpts from her book and introduced a clip from the 1998 documentary she made with her daughter, Dying to Tell the Story.  The clip shows her daughter travelling to Somalia with Mohamed Shaffi, the only journalist to survive the mob attack on the day her brother was killed.

Wood spoke from the audience about how the incident proved a turning point, which focussed attention on front line reporters’ need for safety, hazardous environment and first aid training. These things, he explained, are now seen as routine but 20 years ago were uncommon.

Another audience member mentioned as a follow up to Wood’s comment the RISC training programme set up by journalist Sebastian Junger.  The RISC medical training, which was held at the Frontline Club in September, was set up following the death of Junger’s friend photojournalist Tim Hetherington whilst covering the conflict in Libya in 2011.

An aid worker in the audience asked what motivates journalists to do their job. The chair asked veteran journalist and Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith who was in the audience, to offer an answer:

[Journalists have] a great desire to engage the world…a very real sense of wanting to meet a public need for good quality information which underpins all of it.”

https://twitter.com/LouisLeeson/statuses/397803849530228736

An audience member asked Eldon, after having lost her son if she would still advocate journalism to other young people.  She said while she supports journalists telling the story, she is unnerved by the idea of a kid going off to cover Mogadishu or Syria without proper training.

Smith was asked again to comment, this time on a new initiative the Frontline Club launched recently.  The Frontline Freelance Register (FFR)  is run by freelancers for freelancer to meet the need for industry standards, safety, training and a sense community for the growing body of freelancers in the hope that it will improve both their welfare and effectiveness.

With the presence of a lot of young aspiring journalists, Eldon was asked if she thought taking a risk, albeit a reasonable risk was worth doing.

She advised:

“If you feel compelled to do it, be wise and responsible and then go and do it as well as you possibly can. No story is worth your life….it’s not worth it. [But] you have to be true to yourself and follow what is your purpose in life. Don’t get killed please, because …we don’t want anybody dying.”

The last comment of the event was a poignant testimony to Dan from an audience member who said she knew him briefly and even though he was a few years her junior:

“… he had a deep compassion about him and wisdom beyond his years. He really was the legend of the good die young.”

If you missed the event, watch it back here:

His mother, Kathy Eldon, heart broken by her son’s death, turned her mind to how she could transform the horror of what happened to him into a positive force for good. For 20 years, through filmmaking and campaigning, she has kept her son’s memory alive and celebrated his life by supporting those with a similar vision.

She will be joining us to talk about her journey, how she travelled to Somalia to try and understand why her son had been killed and how his life inspired her and her daughter, Amy Eldon Turteltaub, to start the Creative Visions Foundation, to support creative activists who use media and the arts to create social impact.

Chaired by John Owen, Professor of International Journalism at City University London and Chairman of the Frontline Club. He was formerly head of CBC Television News and, more recently, Executive Producer for Al Jazeera programmes from 2010-11.

Kathy Eldon‘s memoir – In the Heart of Life: A Memoir – has just been released. The event will feature a clip from the 1998 documentary Dying to Tell the Story.

The latest revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden have further exposed the extent of the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance. Amidst this new release of files are allegations that the NSA spied on its allies in Europe and engaged in widespread tapping of phone calls made by prominent European politicians.

European countries summoned US ambassadors and an EU delegation met with officials in Washington to convey their concerns. Will diplomatic tensions lead to any change in US surveillance practice and should we be surprised by these latest revelations?

As pressure mounts on Washington and the release of information continues, join us to explore what the files reveal and the consequences of this diplomatic storm. We will be examining the actions of the intelligence services and asking whether they are aligned with protecting national security or as US Secretary of State John Kerry has said, that in some cases their “actions have reached too far”.

Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and a host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries, he is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain. He has also written for the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Republic and the London Review of Books.

The panel:

Nigel Inkster is director of transnational threats and political risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He served in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1975 to 2006, and spent seven years on the Board of SIS, the last two as assistant chief and director for operations and intelligence.

Steven Erlanger is London bureau chief for The New York Times. Previously he has served as bureau chief in Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Moscow, Bangkok and Central Europe and the Balkans. He has also been cultural news editor, chief diplomatic correspondent based in Washington, Moscow correspondent and Southeast Asia correspondent.

James Rubin is a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute, a contributing editor of The New Republic and a commentator, lecturer and analyst on world affairs and US foreign policy. He served under President Clinton as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief spokesman for the State Department from 1997 – 2000.

Christoph Scheuermann is London bureau chief for German weekly Der Spiegel. He was previously a reporter at the magazine’s national desk in Hamburg, covering terrorism, extremism and current affairs.

Julian Borger is The Guardian‘s diplomatic editor. He was previously a correspondent in the US, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Nearly three years after the start of the revolution in Tunisia, which was followed by uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, many are beginning to examine what has changed in the region. Fighting still rages in Syria’s bloody civl war, Egypt has seen it’s democratically elected president removed by the military and sectarian divisions are rife.

One of those that has had a front row seat of this recent history is the BBC’s Middle East Bureau Chief, Paul Danahar. With a combination of access to the key players and extensive coverage on the ground his new book The New Middle East: The World After the Arab Spring, offers a fascinating and illuminating analysis of the new order. He will be joining us in conversation with BBC Arabic’s Samir Farah, to share his insight and analysis of events and what he feels the future holds for the region and its relationship with the West.

Paul Danahar was the BBC’s Middle East Bureau Chief from 2010–13, running the organisation’s news coverage of the Arab Spring. He was awarded an MBE in 2003 for his work as the Baghdad Bureau Chief during the American-led invasion. Prior to his present posting he was the BBC’s East Asia Bureau Chief for three years, and previous to that he was the BBC’s South Asia Bureau Chief. In 2013 he was appointed the BBC’s North America Bureau Chief, based in Washington.

In Mexico officials put the number of deaths from narco violence at 70,000 in the last six years, with another 27,000 missing. In her new book Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their God Fathers, Hernández explores how Mexico has become a base for the mega-cartels of Latin America, and the links between the cartels and government and business complicity at the very highest levels.

Anabel Hernández has worked on national daily newspapers including Reforma, Milenio, El Universal and its investigative supplement La Revista. She currently contributes to the online news site Reporte Indigo. Her previous books include La familia presidencial, Fin de fiesta en los pinos, and Los cómplices del presidente. In 2012, she was awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom by the World Association of Newspapers in recognition of her fearless work exposing drug cartels.

BBC Middle East correspondent from 1995 and Middle East editor since 2005, award-winning journalist Jeremy Bowen has spent much of the past two years documenting the game-changing moments in the history of the Middle East. He will be joining us in conversation with Samir Farah of BBC Arabic to discuss this historic era, which he documents in his new book The Arab Uprisings: The People Want the Fall of the Regime.

Bowen will be reflecting on the extraordinary heady days of early 2011, talking about the thoughts and feelings of the people involved, and how different situations evolved in the varying countries touched by the uprisings. As well as describing the atmosphere on the ground he will give us an insight into the political context, history and the evolving landscape of the Middle East.

Join us at the Frontline Club for an evening with Alan Cowell as he discusses his latest novel and the real life stories that inspired it with broadcaster, journalist and writer Charles Glass.

A long-time correspondent for the New York Times in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, Alan Cowell previously worked at Reuters, achieving the distinction of being the last correspondent to date to file by carrier pigeon.

Now heading the New York Times web-based breaking news operation in Paris, it is the shift from print to digital news that provides the backdrop to The Paris Correspondent, his second novel.

The book follows Ed Clancy and Joe Shelby, both reporters for The Paris Star, an English-language newspaper based in French capital. Having survived reporting from war-torn countries they now find themselves under attack from something very different to enemy fire: the Internet and 24-hour news cycle.

With:

Alan Cowell, a senior correspondent for The New York Times based in Paris. He is also the author of A Walking Guide: A Novel and The Terminal Spy: The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko.

Charles Glass, a broadcaster, journalist and writer, who began his journalistic career in 1973 at the ABC News Beirut bureau and was chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993. Since then, he has been a freelance writer, regularly covering the Middle East, the Balkans, southeast Asia and the Mediterranean region. He has also published books, short stories, essays and articles in the United States and Europe.

Channel 4 News’ international editor Lindsey Hilsum will be joining us in conversation with BBC Arabic presenter Rasha Qandeel to discuss Libya and her new book charting the country’s history from the beginnings of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime to the dictator’s squalid end.

Sandstorm, Libya in the Time of Revolution is an insightful account of the overthrow of the Arab world’s most bizarre dictator brought down by his own people with the aid of NATO aircraft.

Hilsum will be discussing the history of Gaddafi’s strange regime from its early days when he had looks, charisma and popular appeal – to its paranoid, corrupt final state. She will also be bringing alive the stories of the Libyan people who overcame fear and disillusionment and found the strength to rebel.