MASQUERADE: THE LIVES OF NOEL COWARD.OLIVER SODEN IN CONVERSATION WITH SAVILIAN PAUL LAY.

The voice, the dressing-gown, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakeable. These were props and costumes for a series of parts that Noël Coward performed to perfection: idiosyncratic actor, wealthy playboy, wartime patriot, and national treasure. Above all he was a writer and composer, of immortal comedies and classic songs. Rarely a week passes when Private Lives, Hay Fever, or Blithe Spirit is not in production; phrases from his lyrics – “Mad About the Boy”, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” – are in the public consciousness. Oliver Soden’s sparkling and inventive biography, the first in nearly thirty years, digs beneath the legend, revealing a man both witty and grave, passionate and disenchanted. Granted exclusive and unrestricted access to Coward’s unpublished diaries and correspondence, Soden has delved into private and governmental archives to narrate in more detail than ever before Coward’s hair-raising espionage career – and his tumultuous, necessarily secret, love affairs. Equally at home in words and music, and with a wit and style worthy of his subject, Soden offers fresh readings of plays both familiar and forgotten, proving that Coward was not simply a “talent to amuse” but a daring and radical figure, who unveiled painful, 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”.

“Masquerade is a testimony to Soden’s position as one of the great biographers of our age” Topping & Co Booksellers

“A captivating biography by an emerging literary star” Financial Times

“Brilliant”, Reverend Richard Coles

“fresh and original … a brilliant young writer” Neil Tennant

“The biography that Coward deserves”, Telegraph

“The biography that Coward deserves”, Spectator

Oliver Soden is a writer and broadcaster, and the critically acclaimed author of Michael Tippett: The Biography (2019); Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat (2020); and Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward (2023).

Michael Tippett: The Biography was hailed by Philip Pullman as a “delight to read”; by the Spectator as “an exceptional piece of work”; and by Gramophone as “nothing short of miraculous”. Book of the Year in the Spectator, Times Literary Supplement and Observer, it was read (by the author) for BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, with Sir Derek Jacobi as Tippett. The book won both a Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Storytelling; it was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown.

Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat, a semi-fictionalised biography of the cat who belonged to eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, was described as “inspired and original” by Hilary Mantel and as “the most beautiful and haunting book of recent times” by Alexander McCall Smith. Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement, it was championed as “a little classic” by Dame Eileen Atkins on BBC Radio 4’s A Good Read.

Masquerade, the first biography of Noël Coward in nearly thirty years, was published on 16 March 2023 to widespread praise. “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 guest speaker on BBC Radios 3 and 4, and for Times Radio and ABC Radio National. He has worked on award-winning television documentaries such as Janet Baker: In Her Own Words and for BBC Radio 3’s long-running programme Private Passions. He was educated at Lancing College in Sussex, and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he took a double first in English. Born in 1990, he grew up in Bath and Sussex, and lives in London.