Sir Tom Stoppard wins 2013 PEN Pinter Prize

Czech-born Sir Tom Stoppard, a British playwright has bagged the 2013 PEN Pinter Prize. The prize was established in 2009 in memory of the Nobel-winning playwright Harold Pinter. It is awarded annually to a British writer or a writer resident in Britain of outstanding literary merit who, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world, and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’.

Stoppard began his career in England in 1954 as a journalist, soon moving to London in 1960 to start work as a playwright. His first play, A Walk on the Water (1960), was televised in 1963. His other works – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1964-65), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1978), The Real Thing (1982) and Rock ‘n’ Roll (2006), are also well acclaimed. In 1998 he co-wrote the Academy Award winning screenplay for the film Shakespeare in Love.