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Born in 1899, Noël Coward was raised as a working class boy in the London suburb of Teddington.  From a young age Coward possessed a natural intelligence; he was an avid reader and instinctive performer with an insatiable ambition to learn and succeed.

Encouraged by his mother to attend a dance academy in London, Coward entered into the professional world of theatre at the age of 11. From this point on, his writing and acting career swiftly flourished and he gradually became acquainted with all the ‘right’ people from high society and the theatre world to ensure his future success.

The author of Private Lives, Present  Laughter and Design for Living (among many others), Coward's most enduring work from the war years was the hugely successful black comedy Blithe Spirit, (1941), about a novelist who researches the occult and hires a medium. A séance brings back the ghost of his first wife, causing havoc for the novelist and his second wife. Coward worked on the play for six days, and finished knowing it was witty, well constructed, and that it would be a success. With 1,997 consecutive performances, it broke box-office records for the run of a West End comedy, and was also produced on Broadway, where its original run was 650 performances. The play was adapted into a 1945 film, with a subesquent adaption released in 2020. Coward toured during 1942 in Blithe Spirit, in rotation with his comedy Present Laughter and his working-class drama This Happy Breed.