(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)

British playwright Tom Stoppard, who won an Oscar for the screenplay for the 1998 movie "Shakespeare In Love", has died at the age of 88, United Agents said.

"We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved client and friend, Tom Stoppard, has died peacefully at home in Dorset, surrounded by his family," the talent agency said.

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“He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language," it said.

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Who was Tom Stoppard?

Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937 in what was then Czechoslovakia, the son of Eugen Straussler, a doctor, and Marta (or Martha), née Beckova, who had trained as a nurse.

The Jewish family fled the Nazis and moved to Singapore when he was an infant.

Singapore in turn became unsafe. With his mother and elder brother Peter, he escaped to India. His father stayed behind and died while fleeing after Singapore fell to the Japanese.

In India, Marta Straussler married a British army major, Kenneth Stoppard, and the family moved to England.

Boarding school followed at Pocklington in Yorkshire, northern England, where Tom Stoppard loved cricket more than drama and learned how to be British, which Major Stoppard considered the ultimate nationality.

The adult Stoppard, who rediscovered decades later the Jewish roots that he explored in his final play, would accuse his stepfather of "an innate antisemitism".

He eventually learnt from Czech relatives that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish, and that they had died in Nazi concentration camps.

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