Tom Stoppard’s path to literary success is a story that would be worthy of the stage. Born in Czechoslovakia (as it was then known) as Tomás Straüssler in 1937, he endured a turbulent childhood before rising to fame as one of the great playwrights of his time. Known for his intelligent wordplay and intellectual prowess, Stoppard’s career spanned more than 60 years, across stage, screen and radio.
As well as being a literary great, he was also a staunch advocate for free speech. Although he often suggested that his works were not politically motivated, much of his writing centred around themes of censorship and human rights.
Stoppard joined the advisory board of Index on Censorship in 1978 and made several contributions to the magazine in defence of free speech, declaring in one interview that “free expression was what made all the other freedoms possible, so it was everything.”
Stoppard first rose to fame in 1967 with his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a tragicomedy revolving around the actions of two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which brought overnight success after its London debut at the Old Vic. The play was responsible for the first of his five Tony award wins for Best Play, a record unmatched by any other playwright. Other works to earn this accolade include his 1974 comedy Travesties, 1982 drama The Real Thing and his 2002 drama The Coast of Utopia.
The 1990s signalled a decade of unparalleled success for Stoppard. His services to literature were acknowledged with a knighthood in 1997, and he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his 1998 film Shakespeare in Love.
Age proved no barrier to the writer, who continued his work well into his 80s with his last play Leopoldstadt, a drama centred around a Jewish family in Vienna, which earned him his final Tony award for Best Play in 2023.
His achievements are perhaps even more impressive considering the challenges he faced in early life. Soon after he was born, his family, who were non-practising Jews, were forced to flee Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis. After four years in Singapore, Stoppard once again found himself fleeing conflict. An invasion by Japan caused him to move to India with his mother and brother, while his father stayed behind and was killed at sea by a bomb dropped by Japanese forces. In 1946, Stoppard’s mother married a British army major who gave the family his name and moved them over to England.
These roots influenced his later role as an advocate for free speech. The authoritarian regime that engulfed his homeland of Czechoslovakia in the years between the Soviet Union invasion in 1968 until the fall of communism there in 1989 helped to shape his opposition to totalitarianism and media repression. After reading about Victor Fainberg’s experience of being detained in the USSR in an issue of Index on Censorship in 1975, Stoppard was inspired to write Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, a drama set in a Soviet mental hospital. He dedicated the play to Fainberg and Vladimir Bukovsky, another incarcerated dissident, and an excerpt was published in the magazine in 1978.
Stoppard worked as a journalist prior to his transition to the world of theatre. His early career influenced some of his later causes. For example, he voiced his support for Hacked Off’s campaign for a free and accountable press due to his belief that “free expression in the context of British journalism seemed to me to be about as important a subject for any kind of writing, including plays, as you would find.”
In his final interview with Index in 2021, he warned against the modern culture of intolerance, identity politics and cancel culture, declaring that “the danger to society of actual censorship has probably never been greater”. A year later he wrote playfully but seriously on identity politics.
Such talents as Stoppard come few and far between, and his contributions to both literature and the fight for free speech will be sorely missed.
