From 1968 he wrote regularly for the Times Literary Supplement about Czech

From 1968 he wrote regularly for the Times Literary Supplement about Czech literature.Recently, Hajek had become somewhat disillusioned with developments in the Czech Republic, which seems now to have been largely overtaken by consumerism and commercialism and where there now appears to be little inclination for informed critical debate in the media. A close friend of Skvorecky, Hajek became associated with his small Toronto-based publishing house, 68 Publishers, which between 1971 and 1989 brought out more than 200 new titles of modern Czech literature banned in Czechoslovakia. When the centre was closed as a result of Margaret Thatcher's university cuts in 1983, Hajek was transferred to Glasgow University.While in Britain Hajek strove to inform the Western public about the plight of his native country after the Soviet-led invasion and about modern Czech literary tradition, which paradoxically became extraordinarily vibrant after 1968, producing works of international renown by authors such as Milan Kundera, Josef Skvorecky, Ivan Klima, Bohumil Hrabal and Vaclav Havel. Literarni Noviny was banned, as was everyone associated with it.

Hajek became one of some 400 Czech writers whose name could not be mentioned in print in Czechoslovakia, not even in scholarly publications, from 1970 until November 1989.In 1971, Hajek became Lecturer in Czechoslovak Studies in the Comenius Centre at Lancaster University, which had been founded by Sir Cecil Parrott, a former British ambassador to Czechoslovakia, for the study of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In August, while he was travelling, Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Warsaw Pact armies and the Prague Spring came to an end. However, the rebellion accelerated events leading to the Prague Spring of 1968, during which the paper was revived and reached, during those heady months, a weekly print-run of 300,000 copies (in a nation of 10 million Czechs).In 1968, Hajek received a prize from the American Ford Foundation for his translation of John Updike's The Centaur The prize was a grant for travel to Britain and America. The rebellion of Czech writers against the Communist regime culminated in the autumn of 1967, at their fourth Congress The authorities reacted by suppressing Literarni Noviny. Hajek also published authoritative articles on leading British and American literary figures.Between 1964 and 1969 Hajek worked as a foreign literature editor for Literarni Noviny ("Literary Gazette"), the official weekly of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union, which stood in the forefront of the Czech drive for freedom. Translations of works by Charles Beaumont, Graham Greene, John Updike, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty and David Riesman followed.

The translated novels needed to be defended by carefully drafted, bogus "literary" essays, printed with the translations, which "placed the work in the context of the Marxist struggle" and persuaded the censors that the Western author was "progressive".The first work that Hajek translated into Czech was John Steinbeck's The Pearl, published in Prague in 1958. Soon after graduation he had started translating works by modern English and American authors. The role of an English-speaking translator was extremely important in this period, but the authorities regarded most modern Anglo-American writers and their Czech translators as subversive. Hajek took an active part in this liberalising, cultural movement. He graduated in English and Czech from Charles University in Prague and received a doctorate for a thesis on the Scottish novelist Tobias Smollett, then worked for several years in a Prague literary agency. Igor Hajek was a member of that remarkable generation of Czech writers, artists and intellectuals who strove from the early 1960s onwards to bring freedom to Communist Czechoslovakia by liberating it from the inside, using the arts as a weapon. After several years of extreme Stalinist repression which followed the Communist take-over of Czechoslovakia in 1948, the first cracks began to appear in the totalitarian monolith. From 1956 Czech intellectuals systematically worked at widening these cracks by attempting, at the beginning against overwhelming odds, to open the country to Western thought, by publishing modern Western literature and by encouraging debate on the most important issues of the day.

But he still has a hard struggle to restore Bespak's reputation, particularly with Bob King, the man who signed the Innovata deal back in 1991, still sitting in the chairman's seat Avoid.. On top of that, the company warned that recent problems in America with its largest customer, US Surgical, would lead to a further provision of up to £800,000.Although trading had improved in the second half, Bespak warned that profits for the year ending this month would be below last year, before charges.One City estimate suggests those could turn last year's profits of £7.1m into a loss of around £5m.New chief executive Peter Chambr, formerly of Caradon, said yesterday Bespak was making progress addressing last year's manufacturing problems in North Carolina, while non-US Surgical customers for Tenax Danbury, the other US subsidiary, are at record levels. But if Mr Kirkham remains so cautious, shareholders should expect no fireworks.. Bespak has specialised in banana skins over the past two years or so but with yesterday's profits warning, the latest in a string of negative trading statements, it surpassed itself.