Speaker: Oliver Soden
Topic: The Secret Lives of Noël Coward
Venue: Vinson Lecture Theatre
Time: 17:00-18:00 Saturday 14 September
Talk Summary:
As T.S. Eliot wrote, in 1954, ‘there are things you can learn from Noël Coward that you won’t learn from Shakespeare’. Coward wrote more than 50 plays and nine musicals, as well as revues, short stories, poetry, novel and screenplays to such classic films as Brief Encounter and In Which We Serve. Louis Mountbatten argued that, while there were greater comedians, novelists, composers, painters and so on, only ‘The Master’ had combined 14 talents in one. But perhaps the least known – and among the most important – of his talents was as a gatherer of information for British Intelligence during the Second World War, a role only recently revealed.
Oliver Soden is a writer and broadcaster, and the critically acclaimed author of Michael Tippett: The Biography (2019); Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat (2020); and Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward (2023). Oliver’s writing – on art, music and literature – has appeared in the Guardian, Spectator, London Review of Books. Engelsberg Ideas and the Times Literary Supplement; he is a frequent guest speaker at literary festivals and on BBC Radios 3 and 4, Times Radio and ABC Radio National. He has worked on award-winning television documentaries such as Janet Baker: In Her Own Words and for BBC Radio 3’s long-running programme Private Passions. He is currently working on a biography of Saki