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"Just say the lines and don't trip over the furniture."

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) was a British playwright, actor, and songwriter most active in the twenties and thirties. Known for comedies featuring the upper class, usually with himself as star and director, and musicals.

In World War II, he talked Winston Churchill into making him an agent for British intelligence, and proved to be surprisingly good at it; his reputation as a comic celebrity helped loosen a lot of lips of the enemy. In the fifties he had a resurgence as a singer, singing his own comic songs.

He was also an actor, mostly on stage, but with several film roles, including a memorable turn as the criminal mastermind Mr Bridger in the original The Italian Job. He gave director David Lean his big break, asking the then-editor to co-direct his war film In Which We Serve.

The other thing that's inevitably going to come up at some point is that he was as camp as a row of tents, and although he refused to discuss his private life while he was alive, nobody was much surprised when his authorized biographer confirmed after his death that he was gay. His partner from the mid-Forties onwards was the actor Graham Payn, who appears alongside him in The Italian Job (1969). He was close friends with several notable women including Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, The Queen Mothernote  and Gertrude Lawrence.


Works by Noël Coward include:


Other works by Noël Coward provide examples of:

  • Bestiality Is Depraved: One of the Old India Hands mentioned in "I Wonder What Happened To Him":
    He got chucked out of the club in Bombay,
    for, apart from his mess bills exceeding his pay,
    he took to... "pig-sticking" note ... in quite the wrong way.
    I wonder what happened to him?
  • Black Sheep: The titular "Nina" from Argentina, on account of her refusal to dance and her outspoken loathing for all the romanticised tropes surrounding her culture.
    Although her relatives and friends were perfect dancers,
    She swore she'd never dance a step until she died.
  • Childhood Brain Damage: Another old India hand from "I Wonder What Happened To Him", Munro, was "mentally dim", the reason quoted as being "dropped on his head by his ayah" at age two.
  • Cultural Rebel: "Nina", a young Argentinean woman who hates all the romanticised "exotic" stereotypes of her culture, especially the dancing which she adamantly refuses to engage in. She'd rather read a book, and that was that!
  • Drowning Our Romantic Sorrows: Tom and George empty a decanter of brandy this way in "Design for Living".
  • Land Poor: Coward tackled the topic in "The Stately Homes of England".
    The stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand
    To prove the upper classes maintain the upper hand
    Though the fact that they have to be rebuilt
    And frequently mortgaged to the hilt
    Is inclined to take the gilt
    Off the gingerbread and certainly damps the fun
    Of the eldest son
    Still we won't be beaten, we'll scrimp and scrape and save
    The playing fields of Eton have made us frightfully brave
    And although the Van Dycks have to go and we've pawned the Bechstein Grand
    We'll stand by the stately homes of England
  • Listing Cities: "There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner" is full of the names of cities, counties and other geographical features.
  • List Song: "I've Been to a Marvellous Party" and "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", among others.
  • Parody:
    • "There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner" is a very deliberate piss-take on the "morale-boosting" songs of World War Two, directly referencing, among others, "The White Cliffs of Dover" and "Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit-Bag".
    • "Nina" directly quotes and makes fun of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine", as part of its satire on the tendency for Latin American culture to be portrayed as exotically romantic in films and popular songs of the Anglosphere.
  • Prone to Sunburn: Invoked in the first verse of "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", but then subverted as English people, despite having paler skin than people of the other ethnicities listed, are depicted as being more willing to brave the tropical midday sun.
    Because the sun is much too sultry
    And one must avoid its ultry-violet ray.
  • Spicy Latina: Subverted by the titular "Nina" from Argentina. She is an attractive young woman with suitors, but she absolutely hates dancing of all kinds, as well as soft guitar music, tropical palm trees, still lagoons and the Southern moon. In the end, the only man she consents to marry is a sailor with a wooden leg, precisely because he cannot dance.
    She'd rather read a book, and that was that.
  • Stage Mom: "(Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage,) Mrs. Worthington" is addressed to a stage mother whose aspirations are greater than her daughter's potential.
  • Stiff Upper Lip: "There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner" subverts it with a vengeance.
  • Upper-Class Twit: The four lords from "The Stately Homes of England":
    We know how Caesar conquered Gaul
    Apart from this our education lacks co-ordination.

Noël Coward in fiction:


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