freely shown. Index on Censorship paid special attention to the situation in then Czechoslovakia between the Soviet invasion of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989, devoting an entire issue to the country eight years after the Prague Spring (Issue 3/1976). It included several pieces by Václav Havel, including a first translation of his one act play Conversation, and a letter to Czech officials on police censorship of his December 1975 production of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay. The magazine also carried articles on the state of the Czech theatre and a list of the so-called Padlock Publications, 50 banned books that circulated only in typescript. Index also published an English version of Havel's play Mistake, dedicated to Samuel Beckett in gratitude for Beckett's own dedication of his play Catastrophe to Havel. Both short plays were performed at the Free Word Centre to mark the launch of Index's special issue looking back at the changes of 1989 (Issue 4, 2009). Campaigns Free Speech is not For Sale, a joint campaign report by Index on Censorship and English PEN highlighted the problem of so-called libel tourism and the English law of defamation's chilling effect on free speech. After much debate surrounding the report's ten key recommendations, the UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw pledged to make English defamation laws fairer. "A free press can’t operate or be effective unless it can offer readers comment as well as news. What concerns me is that the current arrangements are being used by big corporations to restrict fair comment, not always by journalists but also by academics." He added: "The very high levels of remuneration for defamation lawyers in Britain seem to be incentivising libel tourism." These campaigns and others were illustrative of then CEO John Kampfner's strategy, supported by then chair Jonathan Dimbleby, to boost Index's public advocacy profile in the UK and abroad beginning in 2008. Until then the organisation did not regard itself as "a campaigning organisation in the mould of Article 19 or Amnesty International", as former news editor Sarah Smith noted in 2001, preferring to use its "understanding of what is newsworthy and politically significant to maintain pressure on oppressive regimes through extensive coverage". Arts and international programmes Index on Censorship also runs a programme of UK based and international projects that put the organisation's philosophy into practice. In 2009 and 2010 Index on Censorship worked in Afghanistan, Burma,