Masquerade
The Lives of Noël Coward
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Narrated by:
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Oliver Soden
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By:
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Oliver Soden
About this listen
'This is the biography - truthful, sympathetic and thorough - that Coward deserves'
DAILY TELEGRAPH
The voice, the dressing-gown, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when one of Private Lives, Hay Fever, and Blithe Spirit is not in production somewhere in the world. Phrases from Noël Coward's songs - "Mad About The Boy", "Mad Dogs and Englishman" - are forever lodged in the public consciousness. He was at one point the most highly paid author in the world. Yet some of his most striking and daring writing remains unfamiliar. As T.S. Eliot said, in 1954, "there are things you can learn from Noël Coward that you won't learn from Shakespeare".
Coward wrote some fifty plays and nine musicals, as well as revues, screenplays, short stories, poetry, and a novel. He was both composer and lyricist for approximately 675 songs. Louis Mountbatten's famous tribute argued that, while there were greater comedians, novelists, composers, painters and so on, only "the master" had combined fourteen talents in one. So central was he to his age's theatre that any account of his career is also a history of the British stage. And so daring was Coward's unorthdoxy in his closest relationships, obliquely reflected throughout his writing, that it must also be a history of sexual liberation in the twentieth century. In Oliver Soden's sparkling, story-packed new Life, the Master finally gets his due.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2023 Oliver Soden (P)2023 Orion Publishing Group LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
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- Christopher John
- 04-10-24
Beautifully Written
I found this biography so well read and written. Soden captures Cowards life with great complexity. He also establishes the contexts through which Cowards create work moved and with which it engaged. He does so with such clarity, dare I say, respect.
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