Noel Peirce Coward is celebrated as one of the most prominent and prolific talents of the modem British theater. His witty, sophisticated comedies were immensely popular in the early part of Ihe twentieth century and have been widely performed ever since. A theatrical jack-of-all-trades. Coward made his mark not only as a playwright but as an actor, director, producer, songwriter, and lyricist: he also wrote novels, short stories, screenplays, and several volumes of autobiography, as well as being a popular night-club entertainer. In a career that spanned over a half-century, he was associated with most of the leading personalities of the London stage. A show business legend and renowned raconteur (a person skilled in telling amusing stories or anecdotes ), Coward was known to his contemporaries as much for his off-stage personality as for his many professional accomplishments.

Bom on December 16, 1899. in Teddington-on-Thames, Middlesex. England. Coward was...