Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward by Oliver Soden

The voice, the dressing-gown and the cigarette in its holder were the props and costumes for the many public roles that Noël Coward performed to perfection. Above all he was a writer and composer of immortal comedies and songs. For years, Coward lived at 111 Ebury Street in Belgravia, but his world-spanning career on stage and screen, his little-known work in espionage and his necessarily secret love affairs have global resonances. Even in 2024, rarely a week passes when Private Lives, Hay Fever, or Blithe Spirit is not in production somewhere.

Soden’s Masquerade considers Coward not only as a comic, but as a daring radical who unmasked paradoxical truths about love, class, and sexuality. As T.S. Eliot wrote in 1954: “there are things you can learn from Noël Coward that you won’t learn from Shakespeare”.

This is a free live event taking place at Victoria library, organised by staff of the NAO (National Audit Office) in collaboration with Westminster public libraries.

Oliver Soden is a writer and broadcaster, and author of Michael Tippett: The Biography (2019); Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat (2020); and Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward (2023). Masquerade is the first biography of Noël Coward in thirty years. "This is the biography" wrote the Telegraph in its five-star review, "truthful, sympathetic and thorough, that Coward deserves." The Financial Times hailed a "captivating biography by an emerging literary star".
Oliver's writing – on art, music and literature – has appeared in the Guardian, Spectator, London Review of Books and Times Literary Supplement; he is a frequent speaker at literary festivals and on BBC Radio, worked on documentaries such as Janet Baker: In Her Own Words and for BBC Radio Private Passions.

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