The Letters of Noel Coward by Noël Coward

A publishing event! The first and definitive collection of letters (most of them previously unpublished) both from and to the incomparable No?l Coward, a unique and irresistible portrait of a society and age-from the Blitz to the Ritz and beyond. The range, charm, and vitality of his talents-he was a playwright, actor, composer, librettist, lyricist, director, painter, writer, cabaret singer, wit-brought him into close encounters, and often close friendship, with the great and the gifted. He knew everybody who was anybody in the theater and in the movies, in literature and in politics, on both sides of the Atlantic. Among those at his "marvelous party": George Bernard Shaw . . . T. E. Lawrence . . . Virginia Woolf . . . the Churchills . . . Daphne Du Maurier . . . Greta Garbo (she wrote asking him to marry her; he wrote back saying he almost accepted) . . . Ian Fleming . . . W. Somerset Maugham . . . Marlene Dietrich (he advised her, "To hell with God damned 'L'Amour.' It always causes far more trouble than it is worth") . . . Tallulah Bankhead . . . Edith Sitwell . . . FDR . . . Gertrude Lawrence (in a cable aboutPrivate Lives: "Have written delightful new comedy stop good part for you stop wonderful one for me stop"), and many more. There are letters about his productions ofBitter Sweet. . .Cavalcade. . .