Václav Havel

Václav Havel (1936-2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet and dissident who became the last president of Czechoslovakia and then the first president of the Czech Republic. As a writer of Czech literature he is known for plays, essays and memoirs. He first rose to prominence as a dramatist, using an absurdist style in works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum to criticise the Communist system. After the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion he was blacklisted, helped found Charter 77, was watched by the secret police and spent several periods in prison, the longest nearly four years from 1979 to 1983. His Civic Forum party took a leading part in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, and he held the presidency from 1989 until 2003 across the two states. Prague airport was renamed in his honour in 2012.