Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard dies at 88

2025-11-29 19:58:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Sir Tom Stoppard, one of the United Kingdom's most renowned playwrights, has died at the age of 88, his agents have announced.

Sir Tom, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his screenplay for the film "Shakespeare In Love," "died peacefully at his home in Dorset, surrounded by his family."

His other stage works included "The Real Thing" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead."

"He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, the generosity of his spirit and his deep love of the English language," United Agents wrote.

The playwright captured the hearts of audiences for more than six decades with his works that dealt with philosophical and political themes.

Paying tribute to his favourite playwright, Sir Mick Jagger posted on social media: "He leaves us with a magnificent body of intellectual and entertaining work. I will always miss him."

He also wrote for film, television, and radio. He adapted Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina into a 2012 film starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law.

In 2020, he published his new semi-autobiographical work titled Leopoldstadt, set in Vienna's Jewish quarter at the beginning of the 20th century - which later won him an Olivier Award for Best New Play and received four Tony Awards.

Born Tomas Straussler in Czechoslovakia, he fled his home during the Nazi occupation and found refuge in Britain.

He later learned from relatives that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish and had died in Nazi concentration camps.

"I feel incredibly lucky that I didn't have to survive or die. It's a prominent part of what might be called a charmed life," he told the American magazine Talk in 1999, while reflecting on returning to his hometown of Zlín, in what is now the Czech Republic.

He worked as a journalist in Bristol in 1954 before becoming a theatre critic and writing plays for radio and television.

"I wanted to be a great journalist. My first ambition was to lie on the floor of an African airport while machine gun bullets flew over my typewriter. But I wasn't very useful as a reporter. I felt I had no right to ask people questions," he said, as quoted by the Reuters news agency.

Sir Tom's career as a playwright did not take off until the 1960s, when the opera "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It later appeared at the National Theatre and on Broadway.

The play focuses on two minor characters from Hamlet. It won several awards, including four Tony Awards in 1968, including Best Play.

He received many honours and accolades throughout his career, including being knighted by the late Queen for his services to literature in 1997./ CNA, translated by BBC