Tom Stoppard was himself to the end

‘Tom Stoppard is dead.’ For anyone who cares for the theatre, the English language, and especially for those of us who knew him, these words are as unthinkable as they are hard to bear. How can such a force of nature, such a generosity of spirit, such a voice of sanity, have fallen silent?

And yet he has gone. To the end, his body emaciated by cancer, he was still the old Tom: self-deprecating but full of ideas and plans. He might have one more play inside him, he told me, but his fingers could no longer physically write and dictation somehow stopped the words from flowing. He was cared for by his magnificent wife Sabrina, who entertained us tirelessly.

A few months ago he rang out of the blue, as he sometimes did, to talk about my father, Paul Johnson, who was his dear friend over many