The website was founded in July 1996 by Jan Čulík, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Since it began, the website has argued that the purpose of its journalism is to introduce ideas from the outside world into a fairly enclosed, circular, Czech-language dependent political and cultural discourse within the Czech Republic.
[citation needed] The main purpose of Britské listy has been to challenge ideas which it claims circulate uncritically within the Czech Republic.
[2][3] Since April 2015, in cooperation with Regionální televise.cz, a Czech cable TV station, Britské listy broadcasts weekly fifteen-minute interviews on topical political and cultural issues.
[4] In 2001, a Britské listy journalist, Tomas Pecina, was arrested and charged for criticising a new law passed in the Czech Republic prohibiting sympathy for the September 11 attacks in New York City.