An anti-communist, he emigrated to Britain with his wife and four children following the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet-led armies of the Warsaw pact. A polymath and polyglot, he worked as a Clinical Psychologist until his early retirement in 1982, when he turned to full-time prose and poetry writing, under his main pseudonym of Jan Kresadlo. His first novel Mrchopevci (GraveLarks) was published by Zdena Salivarová and Josef Škvorecký's emigre '68 Publishers, and obtained the 1984 Egon Hostovský prize.
