Noël Coward (1899-1973) was a consummate and prolific playwright, writer, actor and performer who was knighted in 1970. Among his best known and most revived works are the plays The Vortex, Hayfever, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit. Barry Day has written extensively on Noël Coward. His most recent works are the acclaimed, The Letters of Noël Coward and In His Own Words. He was awarded an OBE for services to British Culture in the US.
Noël Coward was born in 1899 in Teddington, Middlesex. He made his name as a playwright with The Vortex (1924), in which he also appeared. His numerous other successful plays included Fallen Angels (1925), Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1933), Design for Living (1933) and Blithe Spirit (1941). During the war he wrote screenplays such as Brief Encounter (1944) and In Which We Serve (1942). In the fifties he began a new career as a cabaret entertainer. He published volumes of verse and a novel (Pomp and Circumstance, 1960), two volumes of autobiography and four volumes of short stories: To Step Aside (1939), Star Quality (1951), Pretty Polly Barlow (1964) and Bon Voyage (1967). He was knighted in 1970 and died three years later in Jamaica.
Barry Day is an English scholar and writer. He received his MA from Balliol College, in Oxford, and was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his cultural contributions to the United Kingdom and the United States. Day is the author of The Letters of Noël Coward. He splits his time between London, Palm Beach, and New York.