
Masquerade
The Lives of Noël Coward
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Narrated by:
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Oliver Soden
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By:
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Oliver Soden
About this listen
'This is the biography - truthful, sympathetic and thorough - that Coward deserves'
DAILY TELEGRAPH
The voice, the dressing-gown, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when one of Private Lives, Hay Fever, and Blithe Spirit is not in production somewhere in the world. Phrases from Noël Coward's songs - "Mad About The Boy", "Mad Dogs and Englishman" - are forever lodged in the public consciousness. He was at one point the most highly paid author in the world. Yet some of his most striking and daring writing remains unfamiliar. As T.S. Eliot said, in 1954, "there are things you can learn from Noël Coward that you won't learn from Shakespeare".
Coward wrote some fifty plays and nine musicals, as well as revues, screenplays, short stories, poetry, and a novel. He was both composer and lyricist for approximately 675 songs. Louis Mountbatten's famous tribute argued that, while there were greater comedians, novelists, composers, painters and so on, only "the master" had combined fourteen talents in one. So central was he to his age's theatre that any account of his career is also a history of the British stage. And so daring was Coward's unorthdoxy in his closest relationships, obliquely reflected throughout his writing, that it must also be a history of sexual liberation in the twentieth century. In Oliver Soden's sparkling, story-packed new Life, the Master finally gets his due.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2023 Oliver Soden (P)2023 Orion Publishing Group LimitedCritic reviews
A splendid biography,
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Excellent biography of Coward
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Perfect reading of innovative biography
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The breadth and quality of research is impressive, but it’s the clarity of perception that this leads to in Soden’s work that is so engaging. There is a live and appreciation for The Master, but this is no hagiography. That warmth of feeling is tempered always by any records and challenged where necessary by the discovered evidence. Beware any biographer who does not love his subject, for them it always says more about the writer than their subject. Minutiae are a biographers secret weapon, and here the minutiae are lifted from the broad spectrum of contemporary sources and the family that coward made for himself. That ‘family’ context was never so fully explored and understood before.
The case is made (if it needed to be) for Coward as the greatest English dramatist of the 20c, but even for those who choose not to accept it, what is left is a wonderfully engaging, deeply insightful, ge ui Ey learned, legitimately affectionate biography which I think will prove to ignite further interest in Cowards work, which surely must be the point of biography.
Soden is himself a supremely talented writer and reader possessed of a clear voice with a good tone and not without real acting talent too I think. I heartily recommend this audiobook.
Coward in context
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Most enjoyable.
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Quite good
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Excellent book, great narration
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This book is much more than a good biography, though: it falls somewhere between metabiography and biographical criticism, melding form and genre in a way that makes the book both a revealing commentary on a performed life and a memorable performance in its own right. The superb reading by the author only adds to the theatrical effect. It is a beautiful, inspiring listen.
A towering literary achievement
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'Give man a mask and he will tell you the truth'
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Quality of content
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