Tom Stoppard, widely hailed as the greatest living playwright and a master of language whose work spanned stage and screen, dies at 88

He won an Academy Award in 1999 for co-writing the screenplay of the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love , which took home seven Oscars that year; to many outside the theatre world, the film remains his most familiar credit.“He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language,” United Agents said in its statement. “It was an honour to work with Tom and to know him.”Born Tomáš Sträussler on July 3, 1937, in then-Czechoslovakia, he was the son of Dr Eugen Sträussler and Marta (Martha) Sträussler (née Becková), a trained nurse.He was born in Zlín in what was then Czechoslovakia in 1937 and, as a child of Jewish parentage, his family fled the Nazi advance. Skipping university, he began work as a reporter for a Bristol newspaper and soon immersed himself in theatre and film criticism, where his passion for drama quickly deepened.His breakthrough came with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), a daringly playful re-imagining of two minor characters from Hamlet that captured both critical and popular attention and established Stoppard’s reputation for linguistic agility and philosophical wit.In recognition of his services to literature and theatre, Stoppard was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.

Author: Manu Kaushik

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