Philip Hensher

The biography Noël Coward deserves

Oliver Soden’s fine book benefits from much new material – but Coward’s carapace as performer still seems impenetrable

Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in the Broadway production of Private Lives, 1931. [Alamy]

  • Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward

    Oliver Soden

    Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp. 656, £25

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