One of England's finest dramatists, Tom Stoppard, born Tomáš Straussler in Czechoslovakia on July 3, 1937, moved to England with his parents as a young boy and aged 17, began a career as a reporter and freelance journalist. His theatrical career began with the writing of radio and television plays, and his first international success came with the prizewinning Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), a retelling of Hamlet through the eyes of two marginal characters. Stoppard's inventiveness has continued through a long series of plays--including The Real Inspector Hound (1968), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1979), The Real Thing (1982), and In the Native State (1991)--as well as a novel (Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, 1966), and radio and television plays. He has also written screenplays for a number of movies, including the Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love.