‘Distracted’ Tom Stoppard struggles with writer’s block

OUR most celebrated playwright Sir Tom Stoppard reveals he’s struggling to put pen to paper.

‘I started a play in January, and I wrote four pages. They were OK,’ admits Stoppard, whose last drama, The Hard Problem, received mixed reviews when it opened in London in 2015.

‘I had no idea what I was doing — I had no idea about the relationships between the characters. I wasn’t at square one, I was in arrears! I pretend to have external pressure to produce a play, but I don’t — the pressure is really just for myself.’

Sir Tom, 80, who is married to third wife Sabrina Guinness, adds: ‘You need to be in the bubble. Five days would be good. Five weeks would be better. But I am distracted in 18 kinds of ways, the way one is.’