Tom Stoppard has been described as a unique phenomenon among contemporary British dramatists, squatting cheerfully on the fence between 'serious' and boulevard theatre. At a time when playwrights were judged by their political commitment, he achieved fame with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" a debonair conceit about two marginal Shakespearean figures waiting for something to make sense of their lives. Michael Billington, an uncommonly sympathetic and expert observer of the forms of theatre and principal theatre critic of the "Guardian," has followed Stoppard's career with pleasurable bewilderment and offers a clear-eyed assessment of the real merit behind Stoppard's dazzling theatrical cleverness. Covering every phase of Stoppard's career, whether as playwright or adapter from his early radio plays to up to some of his adaptations (1986), Billington provides a precise analysis of each work and the maturing of Stoppard's genius.