Sir Tom Stoppard, who has died aged 88, “wrote plays of dazzling language, intricate wit and dependably intelligent characterisation that touched on everything from quantum physics and landscape gardening to moral positivism and the lives of minor characters in ‘Hamlet’”, said The Daily Telegraph .

Over his long and distinguished career, “Stoppard, who had never been to university, was credited with bringing ideas back into British theatre”. The word “Stoppardian” became “shorthand for rapid-fire wit” and “shimmering wordplay”, and for dramatising complex ideas in a way that both flattered audiences and amused them.

‘A bounced Czech’

The critic Kenneth Tynan argued that the key to understanding Stoppard was never to forget that he was an émigré: because he had no native land or mother

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