Hermione Lee, Tom Stoppard: A Life

Excerpt

When Henry, the playwright-protagonist of Tom Stoppard’s quasi-autobiographical The Real Thing, realizes his aloofness has fractured his relationship with Annie, he laments “It’s as though I’ve been careless, left a door open somewhere while preoccupied” (p. 411). Eight years after The Real Thing, when Stoppard was separating from his wife of two decades, Miriam recalls the playwright saying to her, “I left a door open. I wasn’t careful enough. I didn’t say enough” (p. 414). How does biographer Hermione Lee know such intimate details regarding the marital breakup of the famously reclusive playwright? Besides having unfettered access to Stoppard’s papers, his journals, and his weekly or twice-weekly letters to his mother, Lee has extensively interviewed everyone, securing breathtaking openness from all parties including Stoppard himself. Her thoroughly researched, well-written, judicious thousand-page tome, Tom Stoppard: A Life, offers an authoritative view of one of the greatest writers of our time. …