Stoppard was often hailed as the greatest British playwright of his generation.
British playwright Tom Stoppard, who won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998’s “Shakespeare In Love”, has died. He was 88.
United Agents said in a statement Saturday that Stoppard died “peacefully” at his home in Dorset in southern England, surrounded by his family.
“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. It was an honour to work with Tom and to know him”, the statement said.
Stoppard was born in the Czech Republic in 1937. His family fled to Singapore after Nazi Germany’s invasion in 1939. He, his brother and their mother fled again when Japanese forces closed in on the city in 1941. His father died trying to leave the city. His mother married an English officer in 1946, and the family moved to postwar Britain. The 8-year-old Tom “put on Englishness like a coat”, he later said, growing up to be a quintessential Englishman who loved cricket and Shakespeare.
Stoppard first worked as a journalist before turning to theater in the 1960s.
