Peroutka was born to a Czech-German family in Prague in 1895. In 1913 he began his career as a journalist. After the WWI he became a editor-in-chief of a new newspaper Tribuna ("Tribune"). Some articles published in Tribuna were later incorporated into books Z deníku žurnalistova ("Of the Journalist`s Diary") and above all Jací jsme ("What we are") - in this book Peroutka mapped some myths about the Czech nation. In 1924 Peroutka passed from Tribuna to Lidové noviny and founded - thanks to T. G. Masaryk`s donation - revue Přítomnost ("The Presence"). As a commentator he became very influential, standing on the position of the "Castle" (group of President Tomas Masaryk) and criticizing both communists and the Right represented by the national-democratic party of the first czechoslovak prime minister Karel Kramář. Peroutka expressed his political and other opinions also in several books: Boje o dnešek ("Fights for Today"), Ano a ne ("Yes and No"), Budování státu ("Building of the State") and Osobnost, chaos a zlozvyky ("Personality, Chaos and Bad Habits"). As a representative of the Czech democratic tradition Peroutka was arrested after the outbreak of the WWII in 1939 and held in the German concentration camp Buchenwald until 1945.
After the liberation P. became an editor-in-chief of the newspaper Svobodné noviny and refounded his famous revue Přítomnost under the name Dnešek ("Today"). He wrote two dramas: Oblak a valčík ("The Cloud and the Waltz") and Štastlivec Sula ("Sula the Happy Man"). Political articles Peroutka issued in the book Tak nebo tak ("So or So"). The communist take-over in Czechoslovakia caused that P. decided to emigrate. 1951 he became a director of the Czech division of the RFE. The summa of his democtatis life views was issued in 1959 as "Democratic Manifesto".
P. became a novelist in the exile, too. He re-wrote his drama to the novel of the same name. The second novel Pozdější život Panny ("The Later Life of the Virgin") deals with the idea of the rescue of Joan of Arc. Peroutka`s last drama was named Kdybych se ještě jednou narodil ("If I Was Born One More Time")