Private Lives

＂Noel Coward’s glittering gem＂ - TheTimes

Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne, recently divorced from one another after a five-year marriage, coincidentally arrive at the same French hotel... where they are both honeymooning with their respective new spouses. Jarred by this encounter, Elyot and Amanda realise that they still very much horrified and fascinated by the other.

Frequently performed and revived in the West End, Private Lives is comedy of manners that remains one of Coward’s most popular plays.

This new edition is published in Methuen Drama’s iconic Modern Classics series to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Coward’s death and features a new introduction by Simon Stephens.

Noël Coward was born in 1899 in Teddington, Middlesex. He made his name as a playwright with The Vortex (1924), in which he also appeared. His numerous other successful plays included Fallen Angels (1925), Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1933), Design for Living (1933) and Blithe Spirit (1941). During the war he wrote screenplays such as Brief Encounter (1944) and In Which We Serve (1942). In the fifties he began a new career as a cabaret entertainer. He published volumes of verse and a novel (Pomp and Circumstance, 1960), two volumes of autobiography and four volumes of short stories: To Step Aside (1939), Star Quality (1951), Pretty Polly Barlow (1964) and Bon Voyage (1967). He was knighted in 1970 and died three years later in Jamaica.