The Havels were declared “class enemies”, their wealth confiscated, and the children were denied state education beyond the nursery level. His namesake grandfather Vaclav built the Lucerna Palace dancehall in Wenceslas Square. After the coup d’?t in 1948, when Czechoslovakia fell under Soviet domination, the family’s fortunes nosedived. It’s a general, human affair, and that’s what should be emphasised, not to go around saying that we’re the strongest and therefore can dictate to the world.”Vaclav Havel was born in October 1936, to a well-to-do family of Prague entrepreneurs. When President Bush says, ‘We’re going to export democracy,’ it’s insensitive.

He should be speaking about solidarity with the tortured and the suffering people, and not about exporting his own political system. Solidarity with one’s fellow humans has nothing to do with whether we are a superpower or not. And one of the reasons is the unconscious, superior behaviour of Euro-American civilisation. Even though most of those people [in Muslim countries] aren’t terrorists, they have a quiet sympathy for those terrorists, and you have to analyse why. So if Tony Blair thinks that what is happening at Guantanamo Bay is not good, and that it’s located outside US territory so methods that would not be allowed in the US itself can be used, then he should say so.”How did a rationalist such as himself approach the concept of holy war? What did the intellectual peacemaker say to the dedicated jihadist with the waistcoat of explosives?”I think that, along with the struggle against terrorism, you have to think about why people sympathise with the terrorists in the countries from which they come. I held office for fifteen years and my experience is that you can’t speak the way you would if you were an independent intellectual, but that doesn’t mean that one should lie, or not say what one thinks. Were they to blame in not demanding a bit more loudly that something should be done? “It’s hard to say.

I’m not competent to advise the UK Government, or any other government, for that matter. But it seems to me that the fact that one holds political office should not prevent one from saying what one thinks One perhaps uses more diplomatic language. On the other hand, I don’t like at all what is happening at the Guantanamo base, even less so in that I’m a former prisoner myself.”Our Government has let it be known that they’d prefer to see the prison closed down. But how did he respond to the apparent repudiation of human rights at Guantanamo Bay? And were the rights granted to terrorist suspects the same as anybody else’s?”On the one hand, you can understand that a way of fighting against terrorism must be found, and it will probably be necessary to choose harsher and more drastic measures than the ones we’re accustomed to.