Tom Stoppard

‘The Tom Stoppard Prize’, founded in 1983 in Stockholm, is awarded annually to authors of Czech origin and includes prize money of 30,000 Czech crown and a symbolic marble foundation cube designed by Peter Tucny.

Tom Stoppard was born as Tomáš Straussler on July 3, 1937, in Zlín in the Moravia region of Czechoslovakia, to Martha Bečkova and Eugen Straussler. He is of Jewish origin.

In 1939, the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia and his family fled to Singapore. Subsequently, Martha and her two sons fled to Australia to escape the Japanese. Eugen stayed back in Singapore and died in captivity.

The boys shifted to Darjeeling, India, with their mother in 1941 where they attended the Mount Hermon School. Later, Martha married a British army officer, Kenneth Stoppard who gave the boys his surname.

His stepfather’s pride in being British influenced him very much. He was enrolled at Dolphin school, Nottinghamshire and then completed his education from Pocklington School in East Riding, Yorkshire.

In 1954, Stoppard left school, decided not to pursue a university education— something he regretted years later—and began working as a journalist for the ‘Western Daily Press’ in Bristol.

In 1958, the ‘Bristol Evening World’ offered him the position of feature writer, columnist and secondary drama critic. He became friends with director John Boorman and actor Peter O'Toole early in their careers.

He worked on short radio plays till the time his first stage play, ‘A Walk on the Water’, was staged in Hamburg. It was then broadcasted on British Independent Television in 1963.

His novel, ‘Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon’, published in 1966 is a hilarious fantasy about Moon, a hapless historian who accepts the temporary job as the Boswell to Lord Malquist, a bankrupt aristocrat.

His 1974 play ‘Travesties’ is a recollection of the principal character, Henry Carr’s days in Zurich during the First World War, where he used to interact with James Joyce, Lenin and Tristan Tzara.

In 1966, ‘Stoppard’s ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’, an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy based on the expanded exploits of the two courtiers from Shakespeare's ‘Hamlet’, was first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and garnered great appreciation.

‘Arcadia’, a 1993 play written by Stoppard, is set in two periods 180 years apart. It’s regarded by many critics as the finest play from one of the most significant playwrights in the English language.