Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, who won an Oscar for the screenplay of Shakespeare In Love, has "died peacefully at home" at the age of 88, it was announced on Saturday (November 29). A statement from United Agents read: "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.

"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 was an honour to work with Tom and to know him."

The playwright's contribution to the dramatic arts earned him a host of Tony and Olivier awards over the years, as well as a Golden Globe and an Academy Award with Marc Norman for their 1998 screenplay, Shakespeare in Love, starring fellow Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow.

Stoppard had a very humble start to life, after he was originally born Tomas Straussler in 1939 and at the age of one-and-a-half, fled with his parents and brother from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to Singapore. When the Japanese invaded, he, his mother and his brother escaped to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and then India. Tom's father was killed on another escaping ship that was bombed.

While staying at the Mount Everest Hotel in Darjeeling, his widowed mother met Major Kenneth Stoppard, who offered the family security in England, and the little Czech boy would later become known as Sir Tom Stoppard and one of Britain's best-loved playwrights.

But back in 1967, Stoppard was an aspiring writer who had just published his first novel, with low expectations for the play adaptation. However, the novel sold 688 copies in its first five months, and the play turned out to be the first of many theatrical triumphs performed by top actors worldwide.

Stoppard was married three times over the years; his first marriage was to Jose Ingle, whom he met as a young theatre critic at his first London lodgings in the early 1960s. They moved to a thatched cottage in Buckinghamshire and had two children, but he then began a relationship with Miriam Moore-Robinson, whom he later married.

His third and last marriage was to Sabrina Guinness, the wealthy daughter of the banking branch of the Guinness family, and they lived happily together in Dorset.