Tom Stoppard

Biography

Tom Stoppard (born Tomáš Straüssler, 1937) was born in Czechoslovakia to Jewish parents who fled the Nazis — his father died in a Japanese prison camp; his mother remarried a British officer named Stoppard, who gave Tom his name. He grew up in England, left school at seventeen to become a journalist, and taught himself the theater. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was written when Stoppard was in his late twenties and first performed at the 1966 Edinburgh Fringe before transferring to the National Theatre in London. It made him famous overnight. He was twenty-nine.

Tom Stoppard at a glance