Sir Tom Stoppard, 1937-2025

‘People think there's a choice between smoking and immortality, but we've all got to die of something.’ Quote attributed to Tom Stoppard.

I’ve never seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Or Jumpers, or Arcadia, or any other play by the acclaimed Czech-born playwright who has died, aged 88, at his home in Dorset. On the other hand, I have seen several films for which he co-wrote the screenplay, among them Brazil, Empire of the Sun, Shakespeare In Love (still one of my favourite films), and Enigma.

I was aware too of Stoppard’s cultural impact, and the broad details of a life that began in Czechoslovakia in 1938 before he arrived in Britain, via Singapore, Australia and India, in 1946.

His rock star good looks, his marriages, and his long affair with actress Felicity Kendall all gilded his reputation, but the reason I’m writing about him here is because he was an inveterate smoker, and a few years ago I invited him to attend the annual Forest lunch at Boisdale.

It was a long shot for several reasons, not least his advanced age (he was 85 at the time) which I rather overlooked because, in my mind’s eye, all I could see were the many dashing images of him, cigarette in hand, when he was younger. Also, despite his well documented habit, I don’t recall him ever speaking out against anti-smoking legislation in the manner of David Hockney, for example, so I knew the chances of him coming were very small.

I sent an invitation and a covering letter via his agent but wasn’t surprised when I didn’t get a reply because agents tend to act as gatekeepers and many are extremely protective of their clients, which is understandable.

Also, when I wrote my letter, I was unaware that Sir Tom (he was knighted in 1997) had cancer. I found out last night when I was reading about his death. Only one or two reports have mentioned it, so perhaps it wasn’t widely known, but it was a faux pas on my part.

Nevertheless, 88 is a good innings and, as Stoppard himself is quoted as saying, ‘We've all got to die of something’.

RIP.

PS. Ironically, Sir Tom’s second wife, Miriam, to whom he was married from 1972 to 1992, is a quit smoking evangelist who frequently used her column in the Daily Mirror to demand more anti-smoking measures.

In January 2020 she called for a ban on smoking in outdoor spaces, arguing that it would help denormalise smoking and make quitting more likely. I’ve often wondered whether her two-decade marriage to a chain smoker is partly responsible for her antipathy to the habit!

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While most playwrights reacted to Thatcherism with horror and disapproval, Stoppard did not. He described Mrs Thatcher approvingly as ‘a subversive influence’, and openly referred to the period before her, the time of ‘Sunny Jim’ Callaghan and three-day weeks, as ‘nauseating’. (Alexander Larman, The Critic, February 15, 2020)

His hearing has mostly absented itself but his thatch of grey hair is very present; his voice retains its richness with a hint of speech impediment around the Rs. And after cheating the Grim Reaper so many times as a boy, he's outwitted him as an adult too; he remains an enthusiastic smoker. (Time, October 2, 2022)

The author Robert Harris, a friend of Stoppard, said: "He lived one of the most enviable lives I can think of. He was immensely talented, he was a very happy man, very witty and he enjoyed life. He came to lunch here in the summer and he was still smoking and indeed he was making notes in the summer for writing." (The Times, November 29, 2025)

Stoppard was widely appreciated for his wit. When applying to be a reporter as a 25-year-old, he was quizzed about a line on his CV saying he was interested in politics. Asked by the interviewer who the home secretary was, Stoppard replied: "I said I was interested, not obsessed." (The Times, November 29, 2025)

As I went round his world, interviewing his friends, theatre colleagues and fellow writers, I couldn’t find anyone with a bad word to say about him. He really was, and is, universally loved and admired. (Biographer Hermione Lee, Observer, November 30, 2025)

Additional reading: Tom Stoppard was the epitome of cool. British theatre will be poorer without him (Telegraph)

Below: Sir Tom Stoppard at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival in 2010. Photo: Alamy