The Letters of Noel Coward

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.

Author: Noël Coward
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 03/10/2009
Pages: 800
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.59lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.34w x 1.56d
ISBN: 9780307391001

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 03/29/2009 pg. 20

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."