Stoppard was born as Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937, in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. In 1939, just prior to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia during World War II, the Strausslers, who had at least some Jewish heritage and feared persecution, fled the country to Singapore. In 1942, the playwright's mother moved the playwright and his brother to India to escape the Japanese. The playwright's father, a doctor, stayed behind in Singapore, where he was killed. Mrs. Straussler married Major Kenneth Stoppard in 1946, and the family moved to England, where the young Stoppard received a traditional preparatory education and became a naturalized English citizen.

In 1954, Stoppard began his career as a journalist in Bristol, England, writing for the Western Daily Press, where he stayed until 1958, when he began writing for the Evening World in Bristol. In 1962, Stoppard moved to London, where he wrote theater criticism, radio plays, and his first stage play...