Old King Noël

What is this I hold in my hands? Is it just a book? It’s quite heavy, but somehow, instinctively, one feels its light heart.  When I eventually prize its even glossier inner core from its glossy padded outer shell, I still ask: what is this? It looks like a book, but its pages don’t shut flat or lie open; they spring apart, gaping enticingly, as if someone had inserted bulky, once-essential memos or long-forgotten mementos between the pages. But shake it, and nothing falls out. No shopping list, no ribbon-tied bundles of unrequited love, no scrunched up scraps of half-remembered receipts. Open it at one of these many inviting gaps. What’s this? A manilla envelope, seemingly casually inserted, but integrally attached to the right-hand page. Lift the flap, draw out the contents. What can they be?

There can’t be much left to say about the subject of this elaborate compendium; but by creating so novel a volume on Noël Coward’s trawled-over life and talent, Barry Day has come up with the goods. The manila envelopes contain facsimile documents of the rise of Destiny’s Tot to Total Adoration to Nation Indebted. They show that from his nativity (copy of the certificate recording that blessed event included) in Teddington, then a leafy suburb a mere crow’s-flight from the tinkly West End waltzes of The Dollar Princess or Maid of the Mountains, Peirce Noël Coward was a living cert to take ‘thear-tah’ by the throat and stuff his perception of modern life down it.

His progress, from playing fairy sunbeams via writing sentimental semi-operas, or drug-fuelled youthful declines, the gayest of comedies, the brittlest of revues — often starring himself — to more maudlin late flops about fearful senility, has been thoroughly documented; but the ephemera included in this book — letters from Mountbatten, lyrics for Marlene, far-flung journeys and star-crossed casts — give the Master’s life a lasting, tactile dimension.