Sir Noel Coward

Actor, playwright and private in the East Surrey Regiment

Noel Pierce Coward (1899-1973) was conscripted into the East Surrey Regiment on 23 March 1918. The regimental recruitment register gives his address as 111 Ebury Street, Camberwell and shows he transferred to the 28th Battalion (Artists Rifles), London Regiment. Due to a tubercular weakness he was later found to be unfit for military service and discharged in August that year.

A Society success

Despite his adopted persona as the quintessential, upper-class English gent, Coward, was born in Teddington in 1899, the son of a piano salesman. He made his stage debut aged 11 and by his late teens his theatre career had already taken off; he began mixing with high society, the setting for most of his plays.

By 1929, Coward had become one of the world's highest-earning writers, with an annual income over £50,000. He achieved enduring success as a playwright and composer, producing dozens of musical shows and publishing more than 50 plays, including Blithe Spirit and This Happy Breed. He also penned over a hundred songs, including Mad Dogs and Englishmen, London Pride and Don’t Let’s be Beastly to the Germans.

Also an accomplished film director, Coward was screenwriter and producer/director of eighteen films, In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter being two of the most acclaimed. As an actor, he turned down roles in Dr No and Lolita and his last film was The Italian Job with Michael Caine in 1969.

War work

During the Second World War Coward gave up theatre to run the British propaganda office in Paris and work on behalf of British intelligence. He concluded that "if the policy of His Majesty's Government is to bore the Germans to death I don't think we have time"! At Churchill’s request he ceased war work and began entertaining the troops.

Sexuality and the public persona

Coward was homosexual but as with the majority at that time never publicly admitted it and he remained ‘the congenital bachelor’. In 1913, he became the protege and probably the lover of Philip Streatfeild, a society painter. From the 1940s to his death, his long term partner was actor Graham Payn, although among his lovers were playwright Keith Winter, actors Louis Hayward and Alan Webb, his manager Jack C Wilson and the composer Ned Rorem, who published details of their relationship in his diaries. Coward firmly believed his private life was exactly that and even in the 1960s, he refused to confirm his sexual orientation publicly, wryly observing, "There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don't know." Coward did, however, encourage his secretary Cole Lesley to write a frank biography after his death.

Noel Coward died in Jamaica in 1973. His papers are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

Contributor:Surrey Heritage