Remembering Tom Stoppard, 1937-2025
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We were saddened to learn of the death of Sir Tom Stoppard, regarded as one of Britain’s most remarkable and brilliant playwrights, at the age of 88.
Stoppard won the 2017 David Cohen Prize for Literature, managed by New Writing North on behalf of the John S Cohen Foundation. The prize was established in 1992 and is unique in that it is made in recognition of the entire body of work of a UK or Irish writer. The biennial prize, of £40,000, is for a lifetime’s achievement.
Chair of the Judges that year, Mark Lawson, said “Stoppard’s work is built on foundations of electrifying dialogue, vivid stage-pictures, literary and historical perception, and roles that allow actors unusual verbal and emotional scope. It is another mark of the literary merit of Tom Stoppard that the judges who met his plays mainly on the page were just as enthusiastic as those who had spent numerous evenings with them in the dark. Two decades after Harold Pinter was an early winner of the David Cohen Prize, the award marks its Silver Jubilee by honouring a second giant of contemporary British drama.”
Stoppard’s biographer, and the current Chair of Judges for the David Cohen Prize, Hermione Lee, paid personal tribute yesterday in the Observer reflecting “I became aware of his deep seriousness, as well as his dazzling wit and love of words, his unquenchable brio and his appetite for knowledge. (As Hannah says in Arcadia: “It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise, we’re going out the way we came in”). Talking to those he’d helped, such as the Belarus Free Theatre, or hearing of the work he’d done in the 1970s for the victims of Soviet Communism, or watching him give the Pen Pinter lecture in 2013, warning us about the state of England, I realised he wasn’t just a brilliant creative artist and a marvellous entertainer, he was a conscience to us all.”
Tom Stoppard was born on 3 July 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. At the age of 29, Stoppard was the youngest dramatist ever to have a play performed at the National Theatre (based at that time at the Old Vic), with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a play that was revived at the NT on its 50th anniversary.
This launched a career that would see him rise to his position as one of the most acclaimed playwrights of the modern age, with works such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and The Real Thing.
Stoppard wrote prolifically for TV, radio and film and stage. His television scripts included Professional Foul, Squaring the Circle and Parade’s End. His film credits included Empire of the Sun, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma and Anna Karenina. He wrote across countless topics: from metaphysics and quantum mechanics to moral philosophy and moon landings, the pain of adultery and the excitement of love, linguistics and philosophy. He also wrote passionately across human rights, censorship and political freedom. He was knighted in 1997.
Watch Tom Stoppard interviewed after winning the David Cohen Prize in 2017.