Human rights and moral values were high on Václav Havel’s agenda

Born in 1936, the son of a rich building contractor, Václav Havel was denied a good education after the communists seized power in 1948 and stripped the family of its wealth.

Much of his presidential term was cast as a struggle for the soul of Czech democratic reforms against right-wing economist Václav Klaus. When Mr Klaus served as prime minister, Mr Havel launched a stinging attack against him, which many thought was a step too far.

Angered by the looming break-up of Czechoslovakia, he quit as president in 1992, but soon became leader of the newly created Czech Republic.

Human rights stayed high on his agenda, as did anxiety about the environment and the pursuit of moral values in the globalising world, and he was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

His sparring partner Klaus eventually replaced him as president in 2003.

He repeatedly irked Chinese communists by hosting the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, most recently this month.

“I spent a few years in prison, but perhaps I would be there three times as long if there were not for international solidarity,” Mr Havel said at a seminar on Burma in late 2007.

When asked in a magazine interview in 2008 if he wanted to be remembered as a politician or playwright, he said: “I would like it to say that [he] was a playwright who acted as a citizen, and thanks to that he later spent a part of his life in a political position.”