Tom Stoppard, an acclaimed British playwright who also won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love,” has died, his agency said Saturday. He was 88 years old.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved client and friend, Tom Stoppard, has died peacefully at home in Dorset , surrounded by his family,” United Agents said in a statement posted on its website. “He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language.”

Born Tomás Sträussler in Zlín, a small city in what was then Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), he moved to the U.K. as a young child after his widowed mother married English officer Kenneth Stoppard.

His soon-to-be

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