Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020).

He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013).

[9] Just before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the town's patron, Jan Antonín Baťa, transferred his Jewish employees, mostly physicians, to branches of his firm outside Europe.

[13][14] The book Tom Stoppard in Conversation describes this, but the author later revealed the subsequent discovery that his father had been reported[8] drowned on board a ship, bombed by Japanese forces, as he tried to flee Singapore in 1942.

In 1945, his mother, Martha, married British army major Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the boys his English surname and moved the family to England in 1946.

[1] Stoppard's stepfather believed strongly that "to be born an Englishman was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life"—a quote from Cecil Rhodes—telling his 9-year-old stepson: "Don't you realize that I made you British?

At the Bristol Old Vic, at the time a well-regarded regional repertory company, Stoppard formed friendships with director John Boorman and actor Peter O'Toole early in their careers.

Within a week after sending A Walk on the Water to an agent, Stoppard received his version of the "Hollywood-style telegrams that change struggling young artists' lives."

[1] From September 1962 until April 1963, Stoppard worked in London as a drama critic for Scene magazine, writing reviews and interviews both under his name and the pseudonym William Boot (taken from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop).

[1] In the following years, Stoppard produced several works for radio, television and the theatre, including "M" is for Moon Among Other Things (1964), A Separate Peace (1966) and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank (1966).

On 11 April 1967 – following acclaim at the 1966 Edinburgh Festival – the opening of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in a National Theatre production at the Old Vic made Stoppard an overnight success.

Its cast includes the 18th-century figure of the dandified Malquist and his ineffectual Boswell, Moon, and also cowboys, a lion (banned from the Ritz) and a donkey-borne Irishman claiming to be the Risen Christ.

The story revolves around a male-female relationship and the struggle between the actress and the member of a group fighting to free a Scottish soldier imprisoned for burning a memorial wreath during a protest.

Pauline Kael critic for The New Yorker declared, "Visually, it’s an original, bravura piece of moviemaking...Gilliam’s vision is an organic thing on the screen—and that’s a considerable achievement".

[21] For his 1985 appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs Stoppard chose "Careless Love" by Bessie Smith as his favourite track; he also selected Inferno in two languages by Dante Alighieri as his chosen book and a plastic football as his luxury item.

[22][23] In 1993, Stoppard wrote Arcadia, a play in which he explores the interaction between two modern academics and the residents of a Derbyshire country house in the early 19th century, including aristocrats, tutors and the fleeting presence, unseen on stage, of Lord Byron.

The themes of the play include the philosophical implications of the second law of thermodynamics, Romantic literature, and the English picturesque style of garden design.

[24] The first production premiered at the Royal National Theatre directed by Trevor Nunn starring Rufus Sewell, Felicity Kendal, Bill Nighy, Harriet Walter and Emma Fielding.

A year later the play made its transfer on Broadway starring Billy Crudup, Blair Brown, Victor Garber and Robert Sean Leonard.

The film, a romantic comedy, focuses on a fictional story involving William Shakespeare and his romance with a young woman who is an inspiration for the play Romeo and Juliet.

The film starred an ensemble cast including Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, and Judi Dench.

"[31] In 2012, Stoppard wrote a five part limited series for television, Parade's End, which revolves around a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat, his mean socialite wife and a young suffragette.

This is seen most clearly in his comedies The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and After Magritte (1970), which create their humour through highly formal devices of reframing and juxtaposition.Stoppard himself went so far as to declare "I must stop compromising my plays with this whiff of social application.

"[1] He acknowledges that he started off "as a language nerd", primarily enjoying linguistic and ideological playfulness, feeling early in his career that journalism was far better suited for presaging political change, than playwriting.

[14] The accusations of favouring intellectuality over political commitment or commentary were met with a change of tack, as Stoppard produced increasingly socially engaged work.

[1][14] Stoppard became involved with Index on Censorship, Amnesty International, and the Committee Against Psychiatric Abuse and wrote various newspaper articles and letters about human rights.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977), "a play for actors and orchestra" was based on a request by conductor/composer André Previn and was inspired by a meeting with a Russian exile.

This play, as well as Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth (1979), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006), and two works for television Professional Foul (1977) and Squaring the Circle (1984), all concern themes of censorship, rights abuses, and state repression.

He sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill, and a bronze head is now in public collection, situated with the Stoppard papers in the reading room of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

The collection consists of typescript and handwritten drafts, revision pages, outlines, and notes; production material, including cast lists, set drawings, schedules, and photographs; theatre programs; posters; advertisements; clippings; page and galley proofs; dust jackets; correspondence; legal documents and financial papers, including passports, contracts, and royalty and account statements; itineraries; appointment books and diary sheets; photographs; sheet music; sound recordings; a scrapbook; artwork; minutes of meetings; and publications.