Edwin Muir, as remembered by one of his Prague students

Britské listy.cz 14.09.2026 01:34 This paper was originally published in the volume Scotland and the Slavs: Selected Papers from the Glasgow '90 East-West Forum, Nottingham, England : Astra Press, 1993.. Edwin Muir spent three years in Prague shortly after the war as a professor at Charles University and as director of the British Council. I had the honour to be his pupil. He certainly belonged among those serene personalities whose influence I deeply felt not only in my formative years, but even much later. 1945 was a watershed year for Czechoslovakia. For our country, the war ended on 5th of May, but the American army was not permitted to enter the capital because General Eisenhower was afraid that a swift advance by the Americans would antagonize Stalin. It had been agreed that Prague would be liberated by the Russians. On the 9th of May, the Soviet soldiers finally appeared in Prague after a long march from Berlin. What was called the Prague Uprising started on 5th of May 1945. The turmoil lasted for a few days and then subsided as the Germans gradually withdrew from the city.