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Article: Thomas Stoppard
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of World Biography
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Thomas Stoppard
One of England's most important playwrights, Tom Stoppard (born 1937) was popular in the United States as well. His two great stage successes were
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
and
The Real Thing.
The son of a doctor for the Bata shoe manufacturing company, Thomas Straussler (Stoppard) was born on July 3, 1937, in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. According to Nazi racial laws there was "Jewish blood" in the family, so his father was transferred to Singapore in 1939, taking the family with him. When the Japanese invaded that city in 1942, the women and children were taken to India. Dr. Straussler stayed behind and was killed.
Stoppard attended an American boarding school ...