In praise of Coward

The Albery Theatre is now the Noël Coward Theatre. In The Daily Telegraph Sarah Crompton explains why the playwright deserves to be honoured.

"I see a straight line from Wilde through Maugham through Coward and through Rattigan to Pinter," [Peter Hall] says. "I think all of them - even when they are Irish - have a species of the English stiff upper lip, which is a metaphor for not expressing emotion in any direct form and disguising it if you can. They are all cryptic, they are all subversively funny and they all have quite strong sentiment."