Alan Hollinghurst's Booker prize winning novel sparks free speech controversy in Czech Republic

It is a novel that may seem an unlikely battleground in the fight for free speech and moral standards in the Czech Republic in 2018.

English author Alan Hollinghurst’s Man Booker prize-winning book The Line of Beauty explores gay relationships in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, but after a 35-second excerpt was played on the publicly funded Czech Radio, it has sparked what many say could be a defining fight for press freedom in the country.

Conservatives in the country have broadly condemned the broadcast as “pornographic” and called for new limits on what can be aired, while liberals say such criticism is part of a systematic right-wing attempt to curtail media rights and free speech – which may eventually end in outright censorship.

Those on the left say such controversies were used by the right-wing government of Viktor Orbán in neighbouring Hungary to reign in public media outlets.

They claim to be particularly uneasy because current prime minister Andrej Babiš – often called the Czech Donald Trump – is, like Mr Orbán, a right-wing populist.

The novel excerpt itself aroused almost no negative interest when it was first broadcast in June on Radio Vltava – a highbrow outlet of Czech Radio – as part of a show discussing the theme of water in literature.

But criticism followed a repeat of the programme – on a Saturday morning in July – when a single listener noted on social media that the item was inappropriate for her children.

Although no official complaint was made, the post – now deleted – triggered further denunciations from members of the Radio Council, a supervisory body appointed by the Czech parliament.

One member, Tomáš Kňourek, attacked Radio Vltava’s editor-in-chief Petr Fischer, while dismissing Mr Hollinghurst as “a homosexual activist dressed as a writer”. He labelled the excerpt “pornographic”, before asking: “What will be the next open artistic window? Paedophilia? Terror on children? Ritual murders?”

Responding to the attack, Mr Fischer, a 49-year-old former BBC journalist, said: “Hollinghurst isn’t the problem, it’s just a pretext.

“The problem is me and open-minded people like me. We have used social media to raise Radio Vltava’s profile and become interconnected with liberal-minded people – and that’s what they don’t like.”

Jiří Hošna, a Czech Radio spokesman, said the organisation rejected criticism that the broadcast was “pornographic” but admitted it should not have gone out on a weekend morning “due to its clear erotic context”.