Strudel with my Father in the Café Europa

Unusual father and son true story about secrets and choices, home and loss of home, time and the recovery of some of what has gone – but also about what can never be found again. A personal reflection, it holds up a mirror to the greater story of Europe’s changing history.

Writer Nick Drake says:
“This is a true story about intergenerational misunderstandings and incomprehension, both comical and not, about memory and histories. This is also the story of one family across decades and generations - in that way it also tells a story of Europe, from a time of Nazi expansionism and war to the democratic achievements of the 2020s…”

Nick is our narrator – the detective at the story's heart, looking for clues and possible answers to the mystery of the father and his choices.

The drama opens as Nick is about to give the funeral eulogy for his father, Miles. It’s supposed to honour and remember him. But he is stuck… nothing about his father or his life was simple, or knowable. Which story should he chose to tell?

We go back to the 1990s, when Nick (30s) and his father Miles (70s) visit Prague. It's the first time Miles has been back to his home city – and language - since he and his family escaped for London as Hitler invaded in 1939.

It’s also the first time in years that the pair have spent more than a few hours together. They have become strangers. Miles is ex-military. Nick is gay. He finds his father difficult, frustrating and secretive. Miles finds his son unknowable and disappointing. This return to Prague is meant to reconnect them but there is tension and trepidation. Nick wants to know where his father came from, what's missing in the stories he tells, and why his father is so bloody difficult. Miles, acutely aware of time passing, is thrilled to revisit his childhood, the language, the streets he knew and the Czech food that holds the lost past in its flavours and memories.

Miles suggests they visit Lidice, a town destroyed by the Nazis in reprisal for Operation Anthropoid - the assassination by Czech resistance of Heydrich, nicknamed Hitler's Hangman. Once there, he decides to share a story he's never told before - his involvement in the assassination operation, and his love affair with a young woman who was the resistance liaison. They escaped the Nazis by walking out of the Protectorate, but the young woman died on the way. Miles is overwhelmed by the memory. By confiding this secret, he shares something crucial of himself with his son. This moment of deep connection won't last - but generates a new warmth, a brighter outlook – and it is worth everything.

After Miles has died, Nick proudly tells a historian his father's story. The historian awkwardly asks questions, saying none of it adds up to historical record. Nick is left with a conundrum - why would his father take him all the way to Lidice to tell him something untrue? Was he burnishing a less-heroic truth to impress him? If so, why did he weep? Nick sets out to uncover the truth about his father, with Miles’ voice ever present in this head – and when it comes, the truth, is unexpected.

There are no easy answers. Time has not healed the wounds. But there has been a catharsis through a story told, allowing Nick to speak the eulogy that he would have liked to give.

Nick Drake is a poet and writer for screen and stage. This is his second audio drama for BBC. His first, The Farewell Glacier for BBC Radio 3 based on his poetry collection of the same name (2022), told a story of the Arctic and climate change in voices human and non-human. It was performed by Peter Mullan with music at COP 26 in Glasgow. He co-wrote the film One Life (2024) starring Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter. He has four poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books, including The Man in the White Suit (Forward Prize for the Best First Collection), a pamphlet Ghost Forest (2026) with Dare-Gale Press, and a new collection Tipping Points will be published in 2027. His poem, The Future, was recorded by Andrew Scott for Culture Declares Emergency. He wrote librettos for the operas Between Worlds and Cave - composer Tansy Davies - and the poem-texts for Rachel Portman’s Earth Song (2019), Tipping Points (2022) and The Gathering Tree (2025), a BBC commission for the Last Night of the Proms.

Nick ….. Dino Fetscher
Miles ….. Will Keen
Female Witness and other roles….. Blazena Kovalikova
Czech historian and other roles…. Tom Neo
Vicar ….. Delilah Tahiri

Producer: Polly Thomas
Sound recordist : Alisdair McGregor
Speech assemble : Antonia Gospel
Sound editor : Nic Allan
Sound designer: Olga Reed
Original music : Alexandra Faye Braithwaite
Czech language consultant : Blazena Kovalikova
Production manager: Darren Spruce
Executive producer: Jon Sen

Written by Nick Drake

A Thomas Carter Projects production for BBC Radio 4