Tom Stoppard's breakthrough play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead opened at London's Old Vic in April 1967. When asked at the time what it was about, the young writer famously replied, "It's about to make me very rich". Thirty-five years on, the National Theatre mounts possibly its most ambitious project ever - Stoppard's new trilogy The Coast of Utopia. Dare one ask what this one is about?

In brief, it's about the first generation of Russian intelligentsia and their quest to create a utopian society. Stoppard once claimed, "I do not write with a social objective". But he has incorporated the serious human rights issues he encountered in Eastern Europe in the 1970s into plays including Professional Foul and Squaring the Circle.
		We are still some way from being able to declare confidently what Tom Stoppard is "about"

Stoppard's early life is full of extraordinary contrasts and contradictions. Born Tomas Straussler to Jewish parents in Czechoslovakia in 1937, he was a refugee in Singapore, then India, where his mother married a major in the British army, who brought his new family back to England soon after the war.

He worked on local papers in Bristol after leaving school at 17 and went freelance in 1962. A novel and radio and TV scripts followed. His two marriages no doubt influenced the play The Real Thing (1982) - a tale of marital infidelity which won a Tony Award. Success in the 1990s included the acclaimed play Arcadia, a knighthood in 1997 and an Oscar for the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love in 1998.