Award-winning playwright Sir Tom Stoppard has died aged 88.
The writer, known for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia and the film Shakespeare In Love, died “peacefully” at his home in Dorset “surrounded by his family”, United Agents said in a statement.
The statement added: “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.”
Over his six-decade career, Sir Tom earned Tony and Olivier awards, as well as a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for his and Marc Norman’s 1998 screenplay Shakespeare In Love, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Dame Judi Dench, and Joseph Fiennes.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Sir Tom was forced to flee his home during the Nazi occupation and found refuge in Britain.
After working as a journalist and theatre critic he began writing plays for radio and TV.
His career as a playwright did not take off, however, until the 1960s with Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before going on to the National Theatre and later Broadway.
The play, which focuses on two minor characters from Hamlet, won several awards including four Tonys in 1968.
He went on to write a number of plays including Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Arcadia, and The Coast of Utopia trilogy set in 19th century Russia.
In 2020 he released Leopoldstadt, a play set in Vienna’s Jewish Quarter in the early 20th century.
The semi-autobiographical piece won him an Olivier for best new play as well as four Tony Awards.
Sir Tom also wrote for TV, radio and film, with much of his work exploring complex philosophical and political themes.
In 2012, he adapted Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina for the film with the same name which starred Kiera Knightley, Jude Law and Matthew Macfadyen.
He also adapted Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End for TV which starred Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall and contributed to the screenplay for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Lead singer and co-founder of the Rolling Stones Sir Mick Jagger paid tribute to Sir Tom in a post shared on X, describing him as his “favourite playwright”.
“Tom Stoppard was my favourite playwright. He leaves us with a majestic body of intellectual and amusing work. I will always miss him,” he said.
In 1997, he was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature, and won the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2017.
She made Sir Tom a member of the Order of Merit in 2000: the special distinction granted by the monarch to those who have advanced the fields of arts, learning, literature, and science, and limited to only 24 members at a time.
A production of his play Arcadia, which is set in an English country house, Sidley Park, across two time periods, the early 19th century and the present day, will be on at The Old Vic in London from January.
