When Tom Stoppard visited the refugee camp in Calais once known as the Jungle, where thousands waited to cross the Channel, he was asked by a journalist whether it was possible that Britain’s goodwill was being exploited by would-be immigrants and asylum seekers.
Tom replied that such a thing might indeed be a possibility but that, even if it were, this was an argument about which he was happy to be historically on the wrong side. This reply has always seemed to me the most resonant remark made by any public figure in the last 20 years. It is hard to think of anyone else who would approach the question of illegal immigration with such concision and characteristic generosity.
As an immigrant himself from Czechoslovakia, Tom did more than any other playwright or novelist in his own lifetime to redefine Britishness as something freedom-loving and open-hearted.
His plays, his films, his conversation, his friendships, his causes and his splendid interviews all sung with this same conviction that freedom of thought and freedom of speech were vital human oxygen.
In the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when the most fervent critics of the Soviet system tended to be ex-socialists who were using their anti-communism as a cover for their real task of denigrating the British left, Tom was almost alone in having no domestic animus. He hated Soviet communism because he knew it at first hand and wanted to help do something about it.
Everyone remembering his writing will have their own favourite moments. One of the most attractive things about Tom was that he was spendthrift with jokes. In Arcadia, a young girl asks an older woman, “What is carnal embrace?” and is told that it involves hugging a side of beef. When Tom first sent me an early draft, I said that it was surely a terrible waste to offer the audience such a brilliant line in the first moments when they were just settling in their seats. They might miss it. Tom replied, “No, no, I’m just letting them know that I’m starting as I intend to go on.”
The United States was for Tom a court of appeal, where the productions of his work were often better than in England, partly because he had had more time to rewrite. Working with Mike Nichols in New York on The Real Thing gave him a taste for what a great director could do, while his collaboration with Jack O’Brien in New York produced a stunning version of his trilogy about Russian philosophers, The Coast of Utopia, with Billy Crudup and Ethan Hawke outstanding. Leopoldstadt, his last play, was refined to perfection on Broadway.
Tom and I were friends for over 50 years. We relished each other’s plays, and we loved each other’s company. The French have a word confrère, which means someone in your own line of work who is your loyal and unfailing brother. Tom was my confrère, and I will miss him beyond words.
David Hare is a playwright and writer of screenplays for film and television
Photograph by Erich Auerbach/Getty Images