Stoppard blasts leftie luvvies who despise Britain
SIR TOM STOPPARD has revealed his disdain for left-wing thespians who deride Britain.
The Jewish playwright discussed the “very strong, lively, left-wing side” to English life and English theatre he ran up against throughout his career in an interview with Radio Times.
“I began to resent my sanctuary being pissed on by everybody I knew. Thanks a bunch,” he told the magazine, saying that without the
UK, “I would have been in Communist Czechoslovakia now.” His support for writers and dissidents within the Eastern bloc earned him the suspicion of England’s largely left-wing theatre establishment, he said.
Mr Stoppard was born Tomáš Sträussler in Zlín, a city now in the Czech Republic. His parents were nonobservant Jews who fled the Nazis for Singapore, escaping on the day German troops invaded. His father died following the Japanese invasion of Singapore and, after fleeing to India, his mother remarried an English army major, Kenneth Stoppard, with “an innate antisemitism”, he told the Guardian in 2008. Days after his mother died his stepfather wrote to him to request that he stop using the Stoppard name as he was concerned about his “tribalisation” and support for Soviet Jews. Stoppard’s play Leopoldstadt recently reopened in London’s West End following a pandemic-imposed break.
“I make an appearance [in the play] as a young Englishman, Leo,” he told Radio Times. “In Vienna they say to him, ‘By the way, what is it with Leonard? Your name was Leopold. Too Jewish? You know you had another name and you are the continuation of that person.’”