Born Tomas Straussler in Czechoslovakia, he fled his home during the Nazi occupation and found refuge in Britain.
He later learned from relatives that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish, and that they had died in Nazi concentration camps.
“I feel incredibly lucky not to have had to survive or die. It’s a conspicuous part of what might be termed a charmed life,” he said in US magazine Talk in 1999, as he reflected on returning to his birthplace Zlin in what is now the Czech Republic.
He worked as a journalist in Bristol in 1954 before becoming a theatre critic and writing plays for radio and TV.
“I wanted to be a great journalist,” he said, as quoted by Reuters news agency. “My first ambition was to be lying on the floor of an African airport while machine-gun bullets zoomed over my typewriter. But I wasn’t much use as a reporter. I felt I didn’t have the right to ask people questions.
“I always thought they’d throw the teapot at me or call the police.”
Sir Tom’s career as a playwright did not take off until the 1960s when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was later performed at the National Theatre and Broadway.
The play focuses on two minor characters from Hamlet. It won several awards including four Tonys in 1968, including best play.
He received many honours and accolades throughout his career, including being knighted by the late Queen for his services to literature in 1997.