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LONDON — British playwright Tom Stoppard, a playful, probing dramatist who won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998's "Shakespeare In Love," died at age 88.

In a statement Saturday, United Agents said Stoppard died "peacefully" at his home in Dorset in southern England, 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," they said. ""It was an honor to work with Tom and to know him."

The Czech-born Stoppard was often hailed as the greatest British playwright of his generation.

His brain-teasing plays ranged across Shakespeare, science, philosophy and the historic tragedies of the 20th century. Five of them won Tony Awards for best play: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" in 1968; "Travesties" in 1976; "The Real Thing" in 1984; "The Coast of Utopia" in 2007; and "Leopoldstadt" in 2023.

British playwright Tom Stoppard poses Sept. 4, 2012, as he arrives for the world premiere of "Anna Karenina" in London.

The writer was born Tomás Sträussler in 1937 to a Jewish family in Zlín in what was then Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. His father was a doctor for the Bata shoe company, and when Nazi Germany invaded in 1939 the family fled to Singapore, where Bata had a factory.

In late 1941, as Japanese forces closed in on the city, Tomas, his brother and their mother fled again, this time to India. His father stayed behind and later was killed when his ship was attacked as he tried to leave Singapore.

In 1946 his mother married an English officer, Kenneth Stoppard, and the family moved to Britain. The 8-year-old Tom "put on Englishness like a coat," he later said, growing up to be a quintessential Englishman who loved cricket and Shakespeare.

He did not go to university but began his career, aged 17, as a journalist for newspapers in Bristol, southwest England, and then as a theater critic for Scene magazine in London.

He wrote plays for radio and television including "A Walk on the Water," televised in 1963, and made his stage breakthrough with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," which reimagined Shakespeare's "Hamlet" from the viewpoint of two hapless minor characters. It premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966 and was staged at Britain's National Theatre before moving to Broadway.

A stream of exuberant, innovative plays followed, including meta-whodunnit "The Real Inspector Hound" (first staged in 1968); "Jumpers" (1972), a blend of physical and philosophical gymnastics, and "Travesties" (1974), which set intellectuals including James Joyce and Vladimir Lenin colliding in Zurich during World War I.

Musical drama "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor" (1977) was a collaboration with composer Andre Previn about a Soviet dissident confined to a mental institution — part of Stoppard's long involvement with groups advocating for human rights groups in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

He often played with time and structure. "The Real Thing" (1982) was a poignant romantic comedy about love and deception that featured plays within a play, while "Arcadia" (1993) moved between the modern era and the early 19th century, where characters at an English country house debated poetry, gardening and chaos theory as fate had its way with them.

"The Invention of Love" (1997) explored classical literature and the mysteries of the human heart through the life of the English poet A.E. Housman.

"The Coast of Utopia" (2002) was an epic trilogy about pre-revolutionary Russian intellectuals, and Stoppard drew on his own background for "Rock'n'roll" (2006), which contrasted the fates of the 1960s counterculture in Britain and in Communist Czechoslovakia.

"The Hard Problem" (2015) explored the mysteries of consciousness through the lenses of science and religion.

Stoppard was a strong champion of free speech who worked with organizations including PEN and Index on Censorship. He claimed not to have strong political views otherwise.

Tom Stoppard poses with the award for best play for "Leopoldstadt" on June 11, 2023, in the press room at the 76th annual Tony Awards at the Radio Hotel in New York.

"Leopoldstadt" drew on his own family's story for the tale of a Jewish Viennese family over the first half of the 20th century; it won four Tonys. Stoppard said he began thinking of his personal link to the Holocaust quite late in life, only discovering after his mother's death in 1996 that many members of his family, including all four grandparents, died in concentration camps.

Stoppard also wrote many radio plays, a novel, television series including "Parade's End" (2013) and many film screenplays. These included dystopian Terry Gilliam comedy "Brazil" (1985), Steven Spielberg-directed war drama "Empire of the Sun" (1987), Elizabethan romcom "Shakespeare in Love" (1998) — for which he and Marc Norman shared a best adapted screenplay Oscar — code breaking thriller "Enigma" (2001) and Russian epic "Anna Karenina" (2012).

He also wrote and directed a 1990 film adaptation of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," and translated numerous works into English, including plays by dissident Czech writer Václav Havel, who became the country's first post-Communist president.

Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1997.

He was married three times: to Jose Ingle, Miriam Stern — better known as the health journalist Dr. Miriam Stoppard — and TV producer Sabrina Guinness. The first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by four children, including the actor Ed Stoppard, and several grandchildren.

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