Born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia in 1937 to a secular Jewish family. His father, a doctor, was transferred to Singapore and drowned trying to flee the Japanese. His mother escaped to India, remarried, and the family moved to England in 1946. He did not go to university; instead sheer enthusiasm for journalism took him to a Bristol newspaper, where he discovered a feel for a story.
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (1967) made him famous, reimagining two minor characters from "Hamlet" as they play at chance while their fate is already known. "Arcadia", a melange of ideas on mathematics, Byron, sex and gardening, was set in a perfect English idyll much like the fine Georgian house in which he lived. "The Invention of Love" was his favourite play. "Rock 'n' Roll" reminded him of what could have been his life in Czechoslovakia. He also translated Chekhov.
"The Coast of Utopia", a trilogy about Russian thinkers with its hero in Alexander Herzen, indulged his dream of bringing his characters to the Moscow stage. The play went into rehearsal in Moscow in 2022, just as Russia invaded Ukraine.
"Leopoldstadt", his last completed work, was prompted by the late discovery of his own Jewish roots. Set in Vienna, it began with a large family gathering in 1899 and ended in 1955, when most members were merely names and photos in an album.
He wrote plays in longhand and fountain pen on unlined A4 sheets, then spoke them, with punctuation and stage directions, into a dictaphone. He was knighted and won an Oscar for his screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love". He eschewed party politics, ideologies and dogmas, and resented moral exhibitionism; he never publicised exchanging letters with political prisoners in Russia.
He died on November 29th 2025, aged 88. His final days found him trying to write a play about philosophy students at Oxford in 1939-40, dealing with ethics and morality as objective and real.
I've already told you more than I know.