The Letters of Noel Coward - by Noël Coward (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Lavishly illustrated and annotated, this first and definitive collection of letters to and from the great English playwright provides a divine portrait of an age, from the Blitz to the Ritz and beyond.

"Superb.... The portrait of a complex, charming, driven, serious and, frankly, courageous artist." --The Wall Street Journal

The incomparable Noël Coward loved to correspond with friends, enemies, the famous and infamous, the talented and the powerful, including Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, Greta Garbo, Laurence Olivier, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Lawrence of Arabia, Somerset Maugham, and many more. Granted unlimited access to the Coward archive, Barry Day presents many never-published letters and has unearthed new, startling evidence of Coward's wartime work as a spy. Along with 191 rare photographs, these letters bring to life the people and events that shaped the twentieth century--and a remarkable man who made his own indelible mark at the heart of it.

Review Quotes

"Not your usual epistolary collection.... Day has woven Coward's letters into a beautifully rounded text that reads more like a life portrait."
--Los Angeles Times

"Glitters with the multi-gifted playwright's claws-out bitchiness, tremendous charm, and creative genius.... His letters are absolute knockouts."
--Vanity Fair

"Superb.... The portrait of a complex, charming, driven, serious and, frankly, courageous artist.... History of the most valuable kind."
--The Wall Street Journal

About the Author

BARRY DAY is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a trustee of the Noël Coward Foundation. In addition to his seven previous books on Noël Coward, he has written about Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Johnny Mercer, and Rodgers & Hart. Day was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) "for services to British culture in the United States."