Playwright Noel Coward was on a Nazi death list
COWARD by name, certainly not cowardly by nature.
Noel Coward could have sat out the Second World War by keeping up morale with his acting work.
But instead he volunteered for service with MI6 – and was put on a Nazi death list for his trouble.
Coward was a successful actor and playwright when war broke out, but he immediately abandoned the theatre and sought official war work.
At first, he was appointed to run the British propaganda office in Paris but he wasn’t impressed, commenting: “If the policy of His Majesty’s Government is to bore the Germans to death, I don’t think we have time.”
So he switched roles, working on behalf of the Secret Service.
His task was to use his celebrity and popularity to influence American public and political opinion in favour of supporting Britain in its fight against the Third Reich.
The media were critical of his lavish foreign travel at a time when Coward’s countrymen were suffering the deprivations of war at home but, although frustrated, he was unable to reveal that he was actually acting on behalf of British Intelligence.
And he was denied official recognition of his work when, in 1942, King George VI decided he would like to award Coward a knighthood for his efforts in defence of the realm, but was
dissuaded by Winston Churchill.
The PM was worried about the reaction this would provoke as he knew how the public viewed the entertainer’s “flamboyant” lifestyle.
Churchill couldn’t use this as an official reason for the refusal, and instead cited Coward’s £200 fine for contravening currency regulations the previous year.
The Germans, however, recognised Coward’s efforts by adding him to “The Black Book”, a dossier of prominent people
including the likes of H.G. Wells and Sybil Thorndike, who were to be arrested and liquidated in the event of invasion.
When he learned of this after the war, Coward said: “If anyone had told me at that time I was high up on the Nazi blacklist, I should have laughed.
“I remember the writer Rebecca West, who was one of the many who shared the honour with me, sent me a telegram which read: ‘My dear – the people we should
have been seen dead with’.”
Churchill felt Coward’s best contribution to the war effort was entertaining the troops and civilian population, and though disappointed Coward did just that, endlessly touring Europe, Africa, Asia and America.
True to form, when his London home was destroyed by a Luftwaffe air raid in 1941, he took up residence in the Savoy.
He was eventually knighted in 1969.
‘ Churchill knew how the public viewed Coward’s lifestyle