The Noel Coward Diaries
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Few figures in twentieth-century British culture burned as brightly as Noël Coward — playwright, actor, composer, and wit — and The Noël Coward Diaries grants an unfiltered, intimate passage into the mind of a legend. Edited by Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley, this landmark collection chronicles Coward's personal journals spanning from 1941 to 1969, capturing his razor-sharp observations on celebrity, friendship, theatre, and the shifting social landscape of mid-century Britain and beyond. Written in Coward's own inimitable voice, the entries move with effortless elegance from backstage dramas to glamorous dinner parties, from wartime anxieties to sun-drenched retreats in Jamaica, painting a vivid portrait of a man perpetually at the centre of the world's stage. Beyond its value as a biographical document, The Noël Coward Diaries stands as a remarkable piece of literary history, illustrating the private contradictions of a man whose public persona of polished sophistication concealed a deeply reflective and often candid inner life. Coward's prose is characteristically dry, precise, and laced with the same acerbic humour that made his plays immortal — his diary entries read less like private confessions and more like perfectly crafted performances for posterity. Scholars, theatre lovers, and admirers of golden-age British culture will find this volume an indispensable window into an era of extraordinary artistic achievement. For anyone who has ever wondered what lay behind the impeccable façade of The Master, the answer — surprising, moving, and wickedly funny — awaits within these pages.
Author: Noel Coward
Format: Hardback
Published: 1982, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Few figures in twentieth-century British culture burned as brightly as Noël Coward — playwright, actor, composer, and wit — and The Noël Coward Diaries grants an unfiltered, intimate passage into the mind of a legend. Edited by Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley, this landmark collection chronicles Coward's personal journals spanning from 1941 to 1969, capturing his razor-sharp observations on celebrity, friendship, theatre, and the shifting social landscape of mid-century Britain and beyond. Written in Coward's own inimitable voice, the entries move with effortless elegance from backstage dramas to glamorous dinner parties, from wartime anxieties to sun-drenched retreats in Jamaica, painting a vivid portrait of a man perpetually at the centre of the world's stage. Beyond its value as a biographical document, The Noël Coward Diaries stands as a remarkable piece of literary history, illustrating the private contradictions of a man whose public persona of polished sophistication concealed a deeply reflective and often candid inner life. Coward's prose is characteristically dry, precise, and laced with the same acerbic humour that made his plays immortal — his diary entries read less like private confessions and more like perfectly crafted performances for posterity. Scholars, theatre lovers, and admirers of golden-age British culture will find this volume an indispensable window into an era of extraordinary artistic achievement. For anyone who has ever wondered what lay behind the impeccable façade of The Master, the answer — surprising, moving, and wickedly funny — awaits within these pages.