Stoppard is honoured for his determination to tell the truth about societies.
Tom Stoppard: winner of the 2013
PEN/Pinter prize Photo:
Rex
By Rozina Sabur
Stoppard has previously received awards for many of his plays, including
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) and Arcadia (1993)
and has also written for radio, television and film. In 1997 he was honoured
with a knighthood, and in 2000 was awarded the Order of Merit by the Queen. He
recently wrote the BBC's adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's
End.
The £2,000 prize is awarded annually to a British writer or writer resident
in Britain of outstanding literary merit, who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s
Nobel Literature Prize speech, shows a ”fierce intellectual determination... to
define the real truth of our lives and our societies.’’
Stoppard, who was born in Czechoslovakia and moved to England in 1946,
honoured the British playwright who gives his name to the prize. ‘’Harold was
one of the reasons I wanted to write plays,” he said.
“I had the sense not to attempt a 'Pinter play', but in other respects, as
the years went by, he became and remained a model for the kind of fearless
integrity which PEN exists to defend among writers, and most of us had occasion
to feel humbled by his example.’’
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