Work for radio, film, and TV

In his early years Stoppard wrote extensively for BBC radio, in many cases introducing a touch of surrealism. Some of his better known radio works include: If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank; Albert’s Bridge; The Dog it was that Died; and Artist Descending a Staircase, a story told by means of multiple levels of nested flashback. He returned to the medium for In the Native State (1991), a story set both in colonial India and present-day England, and examines the relationship of the two countries. Stoppard later expanded the work to become the stage play Indian Ink (1995).

In his television play Professional Foul (1977), an English philosophy professor visits Prague, officially to speak at a colloquium, unofficially to watch a football international between England and Czechoslovakia. He meets one of his former students and is persuaded to smuggle the student’s dissident thesis out of the country.

He has also adapted many of his own plays for film and TV, notably the 1990 production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Tom Stoppard has written extensively for film and television. Some of his better-known scripts and adaptations include:

(1975) Three Men in a Boat (adaptation of Jerome K. Jerome’s novel for BBC Television);

(1975) The Boundary (co-authored by Clive Exton, a 30 minute BBC television play written, rehearsed and performed within a week);

(1977) Professional Foul (dedicated to fellow playwright Václav Havel);

(1985) Brazil (co-authored with Terry Gilliam, script nominated for an Academy Award);

(1987) Empire of the Sun;

(1990) The Russia House;

(1998) Shakespeare In Love (co-authored with Marc Norman, script won an Academy Award);

(2001) Enigma;

(2005) His Dark Materials (a draft screenplay, subsequently rejected);

(2005) Star Wars: Episode III − Revenge of the Sith (rumoured uncredited rewrite);

(2007) The Bourne Ultimatum (in pre-production).

It is rumoured that Stoppard assisted George Lucas in polishing up some of the dialogue for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, though Stoppard received no official or formal credit in this role. He worked in a similar capacity with Tim Burton on his film Sleepy Hollow. He is also rumoured to be writing the script for the 22nd James Bond film, currently under the title of Bond 22.

Stoppard has written one novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966). It is set in contemporary London and its cast includes not only the eighteenth century figure of the dandified Malquist and his ineffectual Boswell, Moon, but also a couple of cowboys with live bullets in their six-shooters, a lion (banned from the Ritz) and a donkey-borne Irishman claiming to be the Risen Christ.