Sir Tom Stoppard, the British playwright whose quicksilver dialogue and philosophical daring reshaped late-20th-century theatre, has died aged 88 at his home in Dorset.

Born Tomáš Sträussler in 1937 in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard fled the Nazi invasion with his family, later settling in England as a teenager. He famously described himself as a “bounced Czech”.

That outsider’s vantage point – mixed with a voracious appetite for literature, mathematics, science and political history – became the foundation of a career that spanned more than 60 years and produced some of the most celebrated plays of the modern repertoire.

Tom Stoppard (1990). Photo WikiMedia Commons

Stoppard began writing short radio plays in 1953–54 and by 1960 had completed his first stage play, A Walk on the Water, which was staged in Hamburg, then broadcast on British Independent Television (ITV) in 1963.

After a brief stint as a drama critic for Scene magazine (writing reviews and interviews both under his name and the pseudonym William Boot), Stoppard received a Ford Foundation grant enabling a five-month stay in a Berlin mansion. There he wrote a one-act play titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, which later evolved into...