Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 â 26 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise”.
Coward was one of the unusual individuals recruited in 1938 by Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent undersecretary at the British Foreign Office, an opponent of the appeasement policy of the Neville Chamberlain government, who had formed a network of unofficial agents. He was sent to Paris, where he set up a Bureau of Propaganda and worked closely with the French. When World War II started, Coward was enrolled in a secret intelligence unit at Bletchley Park, nicknamed the “dirty tricks department.”
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