Noël Coward

Born in the Edwardian era, Noël Coward was an incredibly versatile performer - a skilled actor, singer and director and an accomplished playwright and composer. During his long career he wrote more than 300 songs, many of which, such as 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen', 'London Pride' and 'I Went to a Marvellous Party', became well known through the popularity of the shows they were featured in. Coward's wit and intellect were legendary and his work often contains elements of his wry observations of life and people.

Coward achieved his first great success as a playwright with 'The Vortex'. He went on to pen several more comedies including 'Hay Fever', 'This Was a Man', 'Private Lives', 'Post Mortem' and 'Design for Living'. In the mid-'30s Coward began work on 'Tonight at 8:30', a series of one-act plays that were designed to keep the audience's interest. The plays were successful and catapulted Coward into stardom.

During the Second World War Coward lost no time in offering his services to the nation, putting his career on hold and his talents to good use running the British propaganda office in Paris and working for the Secret Service. After the war he struggled to regain the levels of success his plays had garnered before and in 1955 he recordd a live cabaret show in Las Vegas. He continued to write and perform in his plays both on stage and screen, with notable films in the '50s and '60s including 'Around the World in 80 Days', 'Our Man in Havana' and 'The Italian Job'. After filming had finished on 'The Italian Job', Coward announced his retirement; he had been suffering from the effects of arteriosclerosis and was finding his memory rapidly fading. He died of heart failure at his home in Jamaica at the age of 73.