Editing Tom Stoppard (section)

==Early life and education ==
Stoppard was born Tomáš Sträussler,<ref name="Kois">{{cite web |last1=Kois |first1=Dan |title=Tom Stoppard Doesn't Trust Biographies. Now He's the Subject of One. |url=https://slate.com/culture/2021/02/tom-stoppard-life-biography-hermione-lee.html |website=Slate Magazine |access-date=24 February 2021 |date=23 February 2021}}</ref> in [[Zlín]], a city dominated by the shoe manufacturing industry, in the [[Moravia]] region of [[Czechoslovakia]]. He is the son of Martha Becková and Eugen Sträussler,<ref name="Kois"/> a doctor employed by the [[Bata Shoes|Bata shoe company]]. His parents were non-observant Jews.<ref name="guardian.co.uk">{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/jun/22/books.featuresreviews |title= And now, the real thing |work= 'The Guardian |first=Stephen |last=Moss |date=22 June 2002 |access-date=10 February 2010}}</ref>  Just before the [[German occupation of Czechoslovakia]], the town's patron, [[Jan Antonín Baťa]], transferred his Jewish employees, mostly physicians, to branches of his firm outside Europe.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.cet.ac.il/terezin/dk9e6.htm+tom+stoppard+mother+beck%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26client%3Dsafari| title = Theresienstadt memorial archive ''Tom Stoppard Discloses his Past''| access-date = 21 February 2010| archive-date = 6 November 2016| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161106023725/http://www.cet.ac.il/terezin/dk9e6.htm%20tom%20stoppard%20mother%20beck%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26client%3Dsafari| url-status = dead}}</ref><ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/jun/22/books.featuresreviews "And now the real thing"] ''The Guardian'', 22 June 2002. Retrieved 10 October 2010</ref> On 15 March 1939, the day the [[Nazism|Nazis]] invaded Czechoslovakia, the Sträussler<ref name="Kois"/> family fled to [[Singapore in the Straits Settlements|Singapore]], where Bata had a factory.

Before the [[Japanese occupation of Singapore]], Stoppard, his brother, and their mother fled to [[British Raj|India]]. Stoppard's father remained in Singapore as a British army volunteer, knowing that as a doctor, he would be needed in its defence.<ref name="guardian.co.uk"/> When Stoppard was four years old, his father died.<ref>Bloom, p.13</ref> The writer long understood that Sträussler had perished in Japanese captivity, as a [[prisoner of war#Empire of Japan|prisoner of war]].<ref name="Tom Stoppard 1994 p91"/><ref name="BBC">[https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/ram/ajtstoppard.ram BBC] [[John Tusa]] Interview (Audio 43 mins). [https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/stoppard_transcript.shtml Transcript]</ref> The book ''Tom Stoppard in Conversation'' describes this, but the author later revealed the subsequent discovery that his father had been reported<ref name="Kois"/> drowned on board a ship, bombed by Japanese forces, as he tried to flee Singapore in 1942.<ref name="guardian.co.uk"/>

In 1941, when Tomáš was five, he, his brother Petr, and their mother had been evacuated to [[Darjeeling]], India. The boys attended [[Mount Hermon School, Darjeeling|Mount Hermon School]], an American multi-racial school,<ref name="Tom Stoppard 1994 p91">Tom Stoppard, Paul Delaney (1994). ''Tom Stoppard in Conversation'',  p. 91, University of Michigan Press</ref> where the brothers became Tom and Peter.

In 1945, his mother, Martha, married British army major Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the boys his English surname and moved the family to England in 1946.<ref name=sal/> Stoppard's stepfather believed strongly that "to be born an Englishman was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life"—a quote from [[Cecil Rhodes]]—telling his 9-year-old stepson: "Don't you realize that I made you British?"<ref name="Write"/> setting up Stoppard's desire as a child to become "an honorary Englishman". He has said, "I fairly often find I'm with people who forget I don't quite belong in the world we're in. I find I put a foot wrong—it could be pronunciation, an arcane bit of English history—and suddenly I'm there naked, as someone with a pass, a press ticket". This is reflected in his characters, he observes, who are "constantly being addressed by the wrong name, with jokes and false trails to do with the confusion of having two names".<ref name="Write"/> Stoppard attended the Dolphin School in Nottinghamshire, and later completed his education at [[Pocklington School]] in the [[East Riding of Yorkshire]], which he hated.<ref Name="BBC"/>

Stoppard left school at 17 and began work as a journalist for the ''[[Western Daily Press]]'' in Bristol, without attending university.<ref name="BBC"/> Years later, he came to regret the decision to forgo a university education, but at the time, he loved his work as a journalist and was passionate about his career.<ref name="BBC"/> He worked at the paper from 1954 until 1958, when the ''[[Bristol Post|Bristol Evening World]]'' offered Stoppard the position of feature writer, humour columnist, and secondary drama critic, which took him into the world of theatre. At the [[Bristol Old Vic]], at the time a well-regarded regional [[repertory theatre|repertory company]], Stoppard formed friendships with director [[John Boorman]] and actor [[Peter O'Toole]] early in their careers. In Bristol, he became known more for his strained attempts at humour and unstylish clothes than for his writing.<ref name=sal/>