Tom Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937, in Zlin. in the former Czechoslovakia, to Eugene Straussler (a physician) and Martha (Stoppard). The family moved to Singapore in 1939, but soon after, before the Japanese invasion, Stoppard, his brother, and his mother fled to India, The Japanese in Singapore killed his father in 1941. Alter his mother married Kenneth Stoppard. a British officer, the family relocated to England. At seventeen, Stoppard left school to become a journalist and, soon after, a playwright. He wrote for various British newspapers until 1963. when he devoted himself to play writing. In 1976 he earned a master's in literature at the University of Bristol and completed graduate work at Brunei University and the University of Sussex.

The 1966 production of his Rosencrant and Guiluenstern Are Dead, by the Oxford Theatre Group as part of the fringe of the Edinburgh Festival, propelled him into the theatrical...