NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vogue, Kirkus

"[Tom Stoppard] is widely considered Britain’s greatest living playwright. But this triumphant tale had its origins in tragedy and dislocation, as we find in Tom Stoppard: A Life, by the empathetic, meticulous biographer Hermione Lee. . . . Mr. Stoppard’s works have always combined dazzling theatricality with heavy intellectualism and Big Subjects: the nature of knowledge in \"Jumpers\"; mathematical theorems, Romantic poetry and landscape gardening in ‘Arcadia’; textual scholarship and artistic ideals in ‘The Invention of Love.’ He has managed to reap great commercial rewards without deigning to dumb down his material for middlebrow theatergoers—a rare achievement in show business. ‘I know half the audience may not understand this,’ he remarked of one of his scenes, ‘but I’m writing for the other half.’ . . . Tom Stoppard: A Life is an authorized work; in fact, Mr. Stoppard chose Ms. Lee as his biographer and accorded the author scores of interviews over several years. Ms. Lee [is] a formidable literary scholar.” —Brooke Allen, The Wall Street Journal

"In this near-perfect combination of author and subject, Hermione Lee crafts a biography of one of the greatest living playwrights. Stoppard’s work includes not only plays (‘Arcadia’) but also films (‘Shakespeare in Love’). The book will surely be the jumping-off point for all future studies of Stoppard." —Christian Science Monitor

"[Stoppard] emerges from Lee’s book as a magnetic figure to whom others cluster and swarm, and around whom happy accidents, chance encounters, new loves, and worldly goods are heaped like iron filings. . . . Lee steers us through each play, major or minor, with a sturdy account of the background, the plot, the production, the casting, the reviews, the transfers to other theatres, and the intellectual grist. . . . To his battalions of fans, as to his detractors, Stoppard is the cerebrator-in-chief, whose plays dispatch you into the outside world with a pleasantly spinning head. (‘Oh, do keep up!’ an actor suddenly said, addressing the audience, at a matinée of ‘Travesties.’) Part of Lee’s mission is to demonstrate that this constricted view of him will not suffice. She’s right; Stoppard is no more Tin Man than he is Scarecrow, and to treat the emotional impact of The Real Thing as an unprecedented jolt, as some critics chose to do, is to ignore the heartaches and pains that suffused what had come before.” —Anthony Lane, The New Yorker