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With Ace of Clubs (1949) Coward sought to be up-to-date, with the setting of a contemporary Soho nightclub. It did better than its three predecessors, running for 211 performances, but Coward wrote, "I am furious about Ace of Clubs not being a real smash and I have come to the conclusion that if they don't care for first rate music, lyrics, dialogue and performance they can stuff it up their collective arses and go and see [Ivor Novello's] King's Rhapsody". [177] He reverted, without success, to a romantic historical setting for After the Ball (1954 – 188 performances). His last two musicals were premiered on Broadway rather than in London. Sail Away (1961) with a setting on a modern cruise ship ran for 167 performances in New York and then 252 in London. [178] For his last and least successful musical, Coward reverted to Ruritanian royalty in The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963), which closed after 112 performances in New York and has never been staged in London. [179] At the outbreak of the Second World War, Coward volunteered for war work, running the British propaganda office in Paris. He also worked with the Secret Service, seeking to use his influence to persuade the American public and government to help Britain. Coward won an Academy Honorary Award in 1943 for his naval film drama In Which We Serve and was knighted in 1970. In the 1950s he achieved fresh success as a cabaret performer, performing his own songs, such as " Mad Dogs and Englishmen", " London Pride", and " I Went to a Marvellous Party". Thorpe, Vanessa. "Coward's long-lost satire was almost too 'daring' about women", The Observer, 16 September 2007, accessed 22 September 2016

Payn, Graham; Morley, Sheridan, eds. (1982). The Noël Coward Diaries (1941–1969). London: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-297-78142-4. We are committed to protecting your personal information and to bring transparent about the information we hold about you. Using personal information allows us to develop a better understanding of our patrons.

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I went to Iolanthe... beautifully done and the music lovely but dated. It's no use, I hate Gilbert and Sullivan". [184]

The exhausting thing [for him was] having to perform Noël Coward all the time," suggests Barnaby Thompson, director of the documentary Mad About the Boy. "I assumed he grew up in a nice family, had a good education… then we find out he left school at nine? He was a child actor, and entirely self-educated. So you've got a guy who, from nowhere, created this incredible persona that ended up defining the modern Englishman." Historic England, "Teddington Library (1396400)", National Heritage List for England , accessed 3 July 2014

Coward spelled his first name with the diæresis (" I didn't put the dots over the 'e' in Noël. The language did. Otherwise it's not Noël but Nool!"). [150] The press and many book publishers failed to follow suit, and his name was printed as 'Noel' in The Times, The Observer and other contemporary newspapers and books. [n 12] Public image [ edit ] The Coward image: with cigarette holder in 1930

Coward's music, writings, characteristic voice and style have been widely parodied and imitated, for instance in Monty Python, [196] Round the Horne, [197] and Privates on Parade. [198] Coward has frequently been depicted as a character in plays, [199] [200] films, television and radio shows, for example, in the 1968 Julie Andrews film Star! (in which Coward was portrayed by his godson, Daniel Massey), [201] the BBC sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart [202] and a BBC Radio 4 series written by Marcy Kahan in which Coward was dramatised as a detective in Design For Murder (2000), A Bullet at Balmain's (2003) and Death at the Desert Inn (2005), and as a spy in Blithe Spy (2002) and Our Man In Jamaica (2007), with Malcolm Sinclair playing Coward in each. [203] On stage, characters based on Coward have included Beverly Carlton in the 1939 Broadway play The Man Who Came to Dinner. [204] A play about the friendship between Coward and Dietrich, called Lunch with Marlene, by Chris Burgess, ran at the New End Theatre in 2008. The second act presents a musical revue, including Coward songs such as "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans". [205] Left alone with Richard, Judith flirts with him, and when he chastely kisses her she theatrically over-reacts as though they were conducting a serious affair. She nonplusses Richard by talking of breaking the news to David. She in turn is nonplussed to discover Sandy and Sorel kissing in the library. That too has been mere flirtation, but both Judith and Sorel enjoy themselves by exaggerating it. Judith gives a performance nobly renouncing her claim on Sandy, and exits. Sorel explains to Sandy that she was just playing the theatrical game for Judith's benefit, as "one always plays up to Mother in this house; it's a sort of unwritten law." They leave. [24] Hoare, Philip. "Coward, Sir Noël Peirce (1899–1973)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, January 2008. (subscription or UK public library membership required) Even Cole Lesley's 1976 biography refers to Coward as "Noel": "...I have also forgone the use of his beloved diaeresis over the 'e' in his name, having no wish to dizzy the eye of the reader." [151]When World War Two began, the deeply patriotic Coward attempted to atone for missing the first one – bothering everyone, up to and including Churchill, for a job. He ended up with several: spying for an underground new secret service, running a propaganda department in France, attempting to stealthily influence important Americans to support Britain and enter the war, even holding meetings in President Roosevelt's bedroom. Coward continued to perform during most of the First World War, appearing at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1916 in The Happy Family [17] and on tour with Amy Brandon Thomas's company in Charley's Aunt. In 1917, he appeared in The Saving Grace, a comedy produced by Hawtrey. Coward recalled in his memoirs, "My part was reasonably large and I was really quite good in it, owing to the kindness and care of Hawtrey's direction. He took endless trouble with me ... and taught me during those two short weeks many technical points of comedy acting which I use to this day." [21] Coward is of the generation that came out of the First World War and the global pandemic of the Spanish Flu, and thought that the future was deeply bleak, with another war on the horizon," says Soden.

The BBC recorded another television production, which was first shown in the UK during Christmas 1984. This version stars Penelope Keith as Judith, Eddington as David, Patricia Hodge as Myra, Michael Siberry as Simon, Phoebe Nicholls as Sorel and Benjamin Whitrow as Richard. [73] Publication [ edit ] Act I opens with the curtain rising on the hall of David Bliss's home. While the room is comfortable and well-lived-in, it is very untidy and unorganized. Among the general chaos sits brother and sister, Simon and Sorel Bliss, discussing poetry and art. Their mother, Judith Bliss, enters the room and joins the conversation. She is a retired, once-great actress who lives her life with a natural theatricality, as well as a natural dimwittedness. David Bliss, the family patriarch, eventually enters as well; he is a writer attempting to finish his latest novel. Grove, Valerie, "Carrying on Kenneth's pain", The Times, 27 December 1997, p. 19 and "Book Now" The Independent, 20 August 2008, p. 16 Herbert, Ian, ed. (1977). Who's Who in the Theatre (sixteenthed.). London and Detroit: Pitman Publishing and Gale Research. ISBN 978-0-273-00163-8.

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a b Byrne, Ciar. "What's inspiring the Noël Coward renaissance?" The Independent, 21 January 2008, accessed on 17 March 2009