Sir Tom Stoppard has died at the age of 88 at his home, surrounded by family. During his life he wrote film scripts and adapted his own play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".
According to his agency United Agents, Tom Stoppard will be remembered for his works, for "their genius and humanity, as well as for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his deep love of the English language".
Biography of the playwright
Tomáš Strausler, the future Tom Stoppard, was born in the Czech town of Zlín into a Jewish family. At the beginning of World War II his family fled to Singapore; in 1941 they had to flee again, fearing the Japanese invasion. All his relatives who remained in Zlín perished in the Holocaust.
His mother managed to leave with her two sons for India, while his father, the company doctor for the Baťa shoe firm, together with other male employees, was left in Singapore, interned by the Japanese after they captured the city, and died at sea when a Japanese ship was bombed.
In 1946 Tomáš’s mother married for a second time, to Major Kenneth Stoppard of the British Army, and moved to England with him. His stepfather gave the boys his surname and a fine education. But Tom was expelled from school at 17, so he took up journalism and later moved to London, where he began writing for radio and television under the pseudonym William Booth.
Creative career
In 1967 his first full-length work, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," was staged at the National Theatre. This was followed by other works, several of them award-winning.
Stoppard’s contribution to dramatic art earned him numerous Tony and Olivier Awards, as well as a Golden Globe and an Oscar, shared with Marc Norman, for their 1998 screenplay "Shakespeare in Love," which starred Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow.
He also wrote extensively for television, radio and film, including an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel "Anna Karenina" for the 2012 film starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law, and he created the series "Parade's End" with Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall, based on the novels of Ford Madox Ford.
In 2020 Sir Tom released his new semi‑autobiographical work titled "Leopoldstadt," set in the Jewish quarter of early 20th‑century Vienna, which later won him the Olivier Award for Best New Play and four Tony Awards.
Personal life
His personal life was no less eventful. He had relationships with actress Felicity Kendal, who was married to theatre director Michael Rudman (to whom she later returned), and then with Sinéad Cusack while she was in a "stormy and dramatic" marriage with Jeremy Irons.
He was also married twice: to Dr Miriam Moore‑Robinson and to Sabrina Guinness of the Guinness family.
Visits to the USSR and Czechoslovakia
Notably, Tom Stoppard visited the USSR in February 1977 together with colleagues from Amnesty International. About that trip he wrote:
"In Moscow I was frightened. It was grey, cold, I was followed, photographed in the streets; in Petersburg it was a little better."
– the playwright recalled.
He also visited Czechoslovakia, where he met dissident playwright Václav Havel, to whom he dedicated his subsequent play "Professional Foul".
