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Masquerade
- The Lives of Noël Coward
- Narrated by: Oliver Soden
- Length: 22 hrs and 24 mins
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Publisher's Summary
'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.
Critic Reviews
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- Robyn
- 15-04-2023
Brilliant biography
For me, the most outstanding aspect of this biography is the writing. Oliver Soden not only details everything Coward ever did or wrote or said (in public) and everything that ever happened to him, he knows the world of theatre and 20th century UK and US society. Through an obviously huge amount of research and empathy for his subject, Soden deftly recreates Coward's life and world with immense flair. He invariably has just the right word or turn of phrase - so much so that I suspect he's made Coward's life more interesting than it might have seemed in the hands of a less gifted biographer. Structuring parts as theatre productions is a masterstroke, as is the number of times the word 'mask' slips appropriately into the text, tying it in with the title 'Masquerade' and reminding the reader that Coward (like all of us) could present differently according to the setting. Narrating his own work is the icing on Soden's rich cake. Marvellous.
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- busby
- 15-04-2024
Masterful
Definitive. The best theatrical biography since John Lahr’s “Notes On A Cowardly Lion”. Superbly read. Peerless. Bravo!
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