Nobody seemed to have quite so much fun with the English language as Sir Tom Stoppard. And few British playwrights were as revered or decorated.
Not bad, considering English wasn’t his native tongue. Yet the cricket-loving Czech-born emigre – who died yesterday aged 88 – once said he felt instantly at home when he arrived here as an eight-year-old, his family having fled the Nazis.
From that moment he never stopped writing. In time he would be hailed as a titan of drama, our most celebrated modern-era playwright, with a body of brilliant, creative and innovative work that captured political and philosophical themes. Quite simply, said friends last night, there was no other writer like him.
Surrounded by family, he passed away peacefully at his Dorset home, and will be remembered, said his agent, ‘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’.
They added: ‘It was an honour to work with Tom and to know him.’
Since entering the public eye in 1966 with Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Sir Tom wrote some of the 20th century’s most dazzling theatre in a career spanning six decades.
His talents weren’t confined to the stage. He won a screenplay Oscar for the 1998 film Shakespeare In Love and worked on many other blockbuster films, including Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. The word ‘Stoppardian’ was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1993 in reference to the wit, eloquence and philosophical considerations that characterise his work.
As friends paid tribute last night, one noted his ‘mesmerising charisma’ which ‘entranced men and women’. He was married three times: to Josie Ingle, a nurse; to the agony aunt Miriam Stern; and, in 2014, to the television producer Sabrina Guinness, who had briefly dated Prince Charles.
Sir Tom Stoppard arrived in the UK as an eight-year-old after his family fled from the Nazis
The playwright wrote some of the 20th century’s most dazzling theatre in a career spanning six decades
Sir Tom was knighted in 1997 and met the Queen in 2000, when she presented him with the insignia of a Member of the Order of Merit
While married to Miriam, Sir Tom had an on-off affair with Felicity Kendal whom he considered his muse. Felicity once said: ‘I don’t talk about him. He’s married and he doesn’t like it… he is off limits.’ Actress Sinead Cusack was another girlfriend.
Close friend Sir Mick Jagger said: ‘Tom was a giant of the English theatre, both highly intellectual and very funny in all his plays and scripts. He had a dazzling wit and loved classical and popular music alike, which often featured in his huge body of work.
‘He was amusing and quietly sardonic. A friend and companion and I will always miss him.’
Author Kathy Lette called him ‘one of the wittiest people I ever met’.
Sir Tom was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937. His family moved to Singapore, where his father was killed in a Japanese bombing raid. His mother remarried a British Army major and he went to a public school in Pocklington, Yorkshire.
Instead of going to university, he went into journalism, working as a reporter and theatre critic for a Bristol newspaper.
It was in 1966 that he first made his mark. At the age of 29 he became the youngest dramatist to have a play performed at the National Theatre, with Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, which followed two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Marrying wit and irreverence with intellectual virtuosity, his work often revolved around unexpected conceits or juxtapositions, and featured dazzling dialogue, puns and repartee.
Jumpers, for instance, was a play about academic philosophy and gymnastics. He wrote Hapgood, a play about espionage and quantum physics, and Arcadia, about mathematics, thermodynamics, literature, and landscape gardening.
Sir Tom’s many other successes included The Real Inspector Hound, which parodied stage whodunnits and sent up theatre critics, and Night And Day, a satire on the British media.
The writer had a colourful love life and was married three times. FIrst to Josie Ingle, a nurse, then to Miriam Stern (pictured with son Edmund) and finally to producer Sabrina Guinness
Mick Jagger (pictured left) was a close friend. ‘Tom was a giant of the English theatre, both highly intellectual and very funny in all his plays and scripts,’ he said
Sir Tom once said: ‘Some writers write because they burn with a cause which they further by writing about it. I burn with no causes. I cannot say that I write with any social objective. One writes because one loves writing, really.’
For all Sir Tom’s dismissal of academic interpretation, he had hopes his name would live on.
‘Quite frankly, it has always meant a lot to me, the idea that one is writing for the future as well,’ he said on receiving a lifetime achievement award in 2017.
‘I’m never convinced it will work out that way.’
When he was knighted in 1997, he recalled his arrival in Britain: ‘I was instantly proud. I have felt English almost from the day I arrived, but the knighthood puts some kind of seal on that emotion.’
