Noel Coward: Playwright, Performer, Spy

 

Chris Michard at Reuters.com offers an interesting piece on a new exhibit at the New York Public Library on Noel Coward.

For many, the name Noel Coward conjures the image a smoking jacket-clad bon vivant, tickling the ivories and tossing off bons mots between sips of a cocktail.

But a new exhibit that opened on Monday at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center takes a comprehensive look at the many, sometimes lesser-known lives of Coward the celebrated playwright. He was, for instance, a spy.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/13/us-noelcoward-idUSBRE82B1DT20120313

Note: I passed by Noel Coward's Jamaican home Firefly some years ago. I was staying at Ian Fleming's nearby Jamaican villa Goldeneye, where Noel Coward was often a guest.

Fleming, like Coward, served in intelligence during WWII, and the two were good friends. Coward served as Fleming's best man when Fleming married Anne in Jamaica.