The Letters of Noel Coward

Description

"A uniquely charming and enticing journey through a remarkable life. Coward's own record is made all the more delightful by the wise and helpful interpolations of Barry Day, the soundest authority on the Master that there is." Stephen Fry "Precise, witty, remarkably observed and gloriously English" Dame Judi Dench "Barry Day's analysis is both perceptive and irresistible" Lord Richard Attenborough "A far more complex figure than the one we thought we knew. Here you get the truly private Noel" Sheridan Morley With virtually all the letters in this volume previously unpublished - this is a revealing new insight into the private life of a legendary figure. Coward's multi-faceted talent as an actor, writer, composer, producer and even as a war-time spy(!), brought him into close contact with the great, the good and the merely ambitious in film, literature and politics.With letters to and from the likes of: George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, Greta Garbo (she wrote asking him to marry her), Marlene Dietriech, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin, FD Roosevelt, the Queen Mother and many more, the picture that emerges is a series of vivid sketches of Noel Coward's private relationships, and a re-examination of the man himself. Deliciously insightful, witty, perfectly bitchy, wise, loving and often surprisingly moving, this extraordinary collection gives us Coward at his crackling best. A sublime portrait of a unique artist who made an indelible mark on the 20th century, from the Blitz to the Ritz and beyond.

Barry Day is widely regarded as the leading authority on Coward.He has been an advisor to the Coward estate for over 20 years and isthe only person with unlimited access to the Coward archive.