Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard was born Tomáš Straussler to a Jewish family in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. With their parents Eugen Straussler, a doctor employed by the Bata shoe company, and Martha Becková, he and his brother fled the country in 1939 to escape Nazi occupation in World War II. The family originally went to Singapore, where Bata had a factory. Tom, his mother and brother then had to flee to Australia in 1941 to escape the Japanese invasion, but his father stayed behind to volunteer for the British Army and was killed. Tom spent three years in a boarding school in Darjeeling, India. In 1945, his mother married Kenneth Stoppard, an officer in the British Army, who gave the boys his surname and moved the family to England after the war. Tom attended the Dolphin School in Nottinghamshire, and later Pocklington School in Yorkshire. He left school at age 17 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 and secondary drama critic, which took him into the world of theater. He became friends with directors and actors early in their careers such as John Boorman and Peter O'Toole. He also wrote short radio plays and in 1960, moved to London and launched himself as a playwright with A Walk on the Water, later re-titled Enter a Free Man. It was staged in Hamburg, then broadcast on British television in 1963. Since then, he has written numerous works for stage, screen, and television acclaimed for their verbal brilliance and ingeniousness. He was knighted in 1997.