English people

1st row: Alfred the Great • Oliver Cromwell • William Shakespeare • Michael Palin • Georgiana Cavendish • Walter Raleigh • Sting 2nd row: Elizabeth I of England • Bobby Moore • Margaret Thatcher • David Beckham • Harold Godwinson • Kate Winslet • Charles Dickens 3rd row: Pope Adrian IV • Daniel Craig • Isaac Newton • George Harrison • Jane Austen • Damon Albarn • George Stephenson
Total population
90 million worldwide
Regions with significant populations
United Kingdom 45,265,093[1]
United States 27,516,394 a [2]  Canada 6,570,015 b [3]  Australia 6,358,880 c [4]  New Zealand 44,202 – 281,895 [5]
Languages
English
Religion
Traditionally Anglicanism, but also non-conformists (see History of the Church of England) and also Roman Catholics (see Catholic Emancipation). Agnostics, atheism, as well as other religions. (see Religion in England).
Footnotes
a English American, b English Canadian, c English Australian

The English (from Old English: Englisc) are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, a Germanic people originally from Northern Germany who migrated to Britain.^[6]

Historically, the English population is descended from several genetically similar peoples—the earlier Britons (or Brythons), the Germanic tribes that settled in the area, including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, who founded what was to become England (from the Old English Englaland), and the later Danes, Normans and other groups. Following the Act of Union in 1707, in which the Kingdom of England became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain,^[7] English customs and identity became closely aligned with British customs and identity.

Today, some English people have recent forbears from other parts of the United Kingdom, while some are also descended from more recent immigrants from other European countries and from the Commonwealth. Through their position at the centre of the former British Empire, the English are the source of the English language, the parliamentary system, common law systems of many countries and a variety of the globe's most popular sports.

English nationality[link]

Although England is no longer an independent nation state, but rather a constituent country within the United Kingdom, the English may still be regarded as a "nation" according to the Oxford English Dictionary's definition: a group united by factors that include "language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory".^[8]

The concept of an "English nation" is far older than that of the "British nation", and the 1990s witnessed a revival in English self-consciousness.^[9] This is linked to the expressions of national self-awareness of the other British nations of Wales and Scotland  – which take their most solid form in the new devolved political arrangements within the United Kingdom  – and the waning of a shared British national identity with the growing distance between the end of the British Empire and the present.^[10][11][12]

While prescriptions of English national identity can involve beliefs in common descent, most political English nationalists do not consider Englishness to be dependent upon kinship.^[13][14]

Many recent migrants to England have assumed a solely British identity, while others have developed dual or hyphenated identities.^[15][16] Use of the word "English" to describe Britons from ethnic minorities in England is complicated by most non-white people in England identifying as British rather than English. In their 2004 Annual Population Survey, the Office of National Statistics compared the ethnic identities of British people with their perceived national identity. They found that while 58% of white people described their nationality as "English", the vast majority of non-white people called themselves "British".^[17]

Relationship to Britishness[link]

It is unclear how many British people consider themselves English. In the 2001 UK census, respondents were invited to state their ethnicity, but while there were tick boxes for 'Irish' and for 'Scottish', there were none for 'English', or 'Welsh', who were subsumed into the general heading 'White British'.^[18] Following complaints about this, the 2011 census will "allow respondents to record their English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, Irish or other identity."^[19] Another complication in defining the English is a common tendency for the words "English" and "British" to be used interchangeably, especially overseas. In his study of English identity, Krishan Kumar describes a common slip of the tongue in which people say "English, I mean British". He notes that this slip is normally made only by the English themselves and by foreigners: "Non-English members of the United Kingdom rarely say 'British' when they mean 'English'". Kumar suggests that although this blurring is a sign of England's dominant position with the UK, it is also "problematic for the English [...] when it comes to conceiving of their national identity. It tells of the difficulty that most English people have of distinguishing themselves, in a collective way, from the other inhabitants of the British Isles".^[20]

In 1965, the historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote,

"When the Oxford History of England was launched a generation ago, "England" was still an all-embracing word. It meant indiscriminately England and Wales; Great Britain; the United Kingdom; and even the British Empire. Foreigners used it as the name of a Great Power and indeed continue to do so. Bonar Law, by origin a Scotch Canadian, was not ashamed to describe himself as "Prime Minister of England" [...] Now terms have become more rigorous. The use of "England" except for a geographic area brings protests, especially from the Scotch."^[21]

However, although Taylor believed this blurring effect was dying out, in his book The Isles (1999), Norman Davies lists numerous examples in history books of "British" still being used to mean "English" and vice versa.^[22]

In December 2010, Matthew Parris of The Spectator, analysing the use of “English” over “British”, argued that English identity, rather than growing, had existed all along but has recently been unmasked from behind a veneer of Britishness.^[23]

English ethnicity[link]

The conventional view of English origins is that the English are primarily descended from the Anglo-Saxons, Germanic tribes that migrated to Great Britain following the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, with assimilation of later migrants such as the Vikings and Normans. This version of history is considered by some historians^[who?] and geneticists as simplistic or even incorrect. Recently, historians have questioned the assumption that the English are primarily descended from Anglo-Saxons. Based on a re-estimation of the number of settlers, there is a view that it is highly unlikely that the existing British Celtic-speaking population was substantially displaced by the Anglo-Saxons, and the latter were merely a ruling elite who imposed their culture on the local populations.^[24][25] However, many historians, while making allowance for British survival, still hold to the view that there was significant displacement of the indigenous population.^[26][27]

In any event, the Celtic-speaking populations, particularly in their use of Brythonic languages such as Cornish, Cumbric, and Welsh, held on for several centuries in parts of England such as Cornwall, Devon, Cumbria and a part of Lancashire.^[28][29] However, the notion of the Anglo-Saxon English has traditionally been important in defining English identity and distinguishing the English from their Celtic neighbours, such as the Scots, Welsh, Cornish and Irish. Historian Catherine Hills describes what she calls the "national origin myth" of the English:

The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons ... is still perceived as an important and interesting event because it is believed to have been a key factor in the identity of the present inhabitants of the British Isles, involving migration on such a scale as to permanently change the population of south-east Britain, and making the English a distinct and different people from the Celtic Irish, Welsh and Scots ....this is an example of a national origin myth ... and shows why there are seldom simple answers to questions about origins.^[30]

A popular interest in English identity is evident in the recent reporting of scientific and sociological investigations of the English, in which complex results are heavily simplified. In 2002, the BBC used the headline "English and Welsh are races apart" to report a genetic survey of test subjects from market towns in England and Wales,^[31] while in September 2006, The Sunday Times reported that a survey of first names and surnames in the UK had identified Ripley in Derbyshire as "the 'most English' place in England with 88.58% of residents having an English ethnic background".^[32] The Daily Mail printed an article with the headline "We're all Germans! (and we have been for 1,600 years)".^[33] In all these cases, the language of race is employed by the journalists.^[34]

In addition, several recent books by Stephen Oppenheimer and Bryan Sykes, have argued that the recent genetic studies in fact do not show a clear dividing line between the English and their 'Celtic' neighbours, but that there is a gradual clinal change from west coast Britain to east coast Britain. They suggest that the majority of the ancestors of British peoples were the original palaeolithic settlers of Great Britain, and that the differences that exist between the east and west coasts of Great Britain though not large, are deep in prehistory, mostly originating in the upper palaeolithic and Mesolithic (15,000–7,000 years ago). Furthermore, Oppenheimer stated that genetic testing has proven that "75% of British and Irish ancestors arrive[d] between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago" (that is, long before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, and even before that of the Celts).^[35] There is support to say that these ancestors came from the Iberian peninsula and southwestern France, but not from Central Europe, where the Proto-Celts once lived.

History of English people[link]

Early Middle Ages[link]

The first people to be called 'English' were the Anglo-Saxons, a group of closely related Germanic tribes that began migrating to eastern and southern Great Britain, from southern Denmark and northern Germany, in the 5th century AD, after the Romans had withdrawn from Britain. The Anglo-Saxons gave their name to England (Engla land, meaning "Land of the Angles") and to the English.

A reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon burial chamber at Sutton Hoo, East Anglia.

The Anglo-Saxons arrived in a land that was already populated by people commonly referred to as the 'Romano-British'—the descendants of the native Brythonic-speaking population that lived in the area of Britain under Roman rule during the 1st–5th centuries AD. The multi-ethnic nature of the Roman Empire meant that small numbers of other peoples may have also been present in England before the Anglo-Saxons arrived. There is archaeological evidence, for example, of an early North African presence in a Roman garrison at Aballava, now Burgh-by-Sands, in Cumbria; a fourth-century inscription says that the Roman military unit Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum ("unit of Aurelian Moors") from Muretania (Morocco) was stationed there.^[36]

The exact nature of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and their relationship with the Romano-British is a matter of debate. Traditionally, it was believed that a mass invasion by various Anglo-Saxon tribes largely displaced the indigenous British population in southern and eastern Great Britain (modern day England with the exception of Cornwall). This was supported by the writings of Gildas, the only contemporary historical account of the period, describing slaughter and starvation of native Britons by invading tribes (aduentus Saxonum).^[37]

Added to this was the fact that the English language contains no more than a handful of words borrowed from Brythonic sources (although the names of some towns, cities, rivers etc. do have Brythonic or pre-Brythonic origins, becoming more frequent towards the west of Britain).^[38] However, this view has been re-evaluated by some archaeologists and historians since the 1960s, and more recently supported by genetic studies,^[39] who see only minimal evidence for mass displacement. Archaeologist Francis Pryor has stated that he "can't see any evidence for bona fide mass migrations after the Neolithic."^[40]

While the historian Malcolm Todd writes "It is much more likely that a large proportion of the British population remained in place and was progressively dominated by a Germanic aristocracy, in some cases marrying into it and leaving Celtic names in the, admittedly very dubious, early lists of Anglo-Saxon dynasties. But how we identify the surviving Britons in areas of predominantly Anglo-Saxon settlement, either archaeologically or linguistically, is still one of the deepest problems of early English history."^[41]

In a survey of the genes of British and Irish men, even those British regions that were most genetically similar to (Germanic speaking) continental regions were still more genetically British than continental: "When included in the PC analysis, the Frisians were more 'Continental' than any of the British samples, although they were somewhat closer to the British ones than the North German/Denmark sample. For example, the part of mainland Britain that has the most Continental input is Central England, but even here the AMH+1 frequency, not below 44% (Southwell), is higher than the 35% observed in the Frisians. These results demonstrate that even with the choice of Frisians as a source for the Anglo-Saxons, there is a clear indication of a continuing indigenous component in the English paternal genetic makeup."^[42]

Vikings and the Danelaw[link]

From about AD 800 waves of Danish Viking assaults on the coastlines of the British Isles were gradually followed by a succession of Danish settlers in England. At first, the Vikings were very much considered a separate people from the English. This separation was enshrined when Alfred the Great signed the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum to establish the Danelaw, a division of England between English and Danish rule, with the Danes occupying northern and eastern England.^[43]

However, Alfred's successors subsequently won military victories against the Danes, incorporating much of the Danelaw into the nascent kingdom of England. Danish invasions continued into the 11th century, and there were both English and Danish kings in the period following the unification of England (for example, Æthelred II (978–1013 and 1014–1016) was English but Cnut (1016–1035) was Danish).

Gradually, the Danes in England came to be seen as 'English'. They had a noticeable impact on the English language: many English words, such as anger, ball, egg, got, knife, take, and they, are of Old Norse origin,^[44] and place names that end in -thwaite and -by are Scandinavian in origin.^[45]

English unification[link]

Southern Great Britain in AD 600 after the Anglo-Saxon settlement, showing England's division into multiple petty kingdoms.

The English population was not politically unified until the 10th century. Before then, it consisted of a number of petty kingdoms which gradually coalesced into a Heptarchy of seven powerful states, the most powerful of which were Mercia and Wessex. The English nation state began to form when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united against Danish Viking invasions, which began around 800 AD. Over the following century and a half England was for the most part a politically unified entity, and remained permanently so after 959.

The nation of England was formed in 937 by Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh,^[46][47] as Wessex grew from a relatively small kingdom in the South West to become the founder of the Kingdom of the English, incorporating all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the Danelaw.^[48]

Norman and Angevin rule[link]

The Norman conquest of England during 1066 brought Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule of England to an end, as the new Norman elite almost universally replaced the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and church leaders. After the conquest, "English" normally included all natives of England, whether they were of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian or Celtic ancestry, to distinguish them from the Norman invaders, who were regarded as "Norman" even if born in England, for a generation or two after the Conquest.^[49] The Norman dynasty ruled England for 87 years until the death of King Stephen in 1154, when the succession passed to Henry II, House of Plantagenet (based in France), and England became part of the Angevin Empire until 1399.

Various contemporary sources suggest that within fifty years of the invasion most of the Normans outside the royal court had switched to English, with Anglo-Norman remaining the prestige language of government and law largely out of social inertia. For example, Orderic Vitalis, a historian born in 1075 and the son of a Norman knight, said that he learned French only as a second language. Anglo-Norman continued to be used by the Plantagenet kings until Edward I came to the throne.^[50] Over time the English language became more important even in the court, and the Normans were gradually assimilated, until, by the 14th century, both rulers and subjects regarded themselves as English and spoke the English language.^[51]

Despite the assimilation of the Normans, the distinction between 'English' and 'French' survived in official documents long after it had fallen out of common use, in particular in the legal phrase Presentment of Englishry (a rule by which a hundred had to prove an unidentified murdered body found on their soil to be that of an Englishman, rather than a Norman, if they wanted to avoid a fine). This law was abolished in 1340.^[52]

In the United Kingdom[link]

St George's Cross
(England)

St Andrew's Cross
(Scotland)

Great Britain

St Patrick's Cross
(Ireland)

United Kingdom

Since the 18th century, England has been one part of a wider political entity covering all or part of the British Isles, which today is called the United Kingdom. Wales was annexed by England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, which incorporated Wales into the English state.^[53] A new British identity was subsequently developed when James VI of Scotland became James I of England as well, and expressed the desire to be known as the monarch of Britain.^[54]

In 1707, England formed a union with Scotland by passing an Act of Union in March 1707 that ratified the Treaty of Union. The Parliament of Scotland had previously passed its own Act of Union, so the Kingdom of Great Britain was born on 1 May 1707. In 1801, another Act of Union formed a union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, about two thirds of the Irish population (those who lived in twenty-six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland), left the United Kingdom to form the Irish Free State. The remainder became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, although this name was not introduced until 1927, after some years in which the term "United Kingdom" had been little used.

Throughout the history of the UK, the English have been dominant in population and in political weight. As a consequence, notions of 'Englishness' and 'Britishness' are often very similar. At the same time, after the Union of 1707, the English, along with the other peoples of the British Isles, have been encouraged to think of themselves as British rather than to identify themselves with the constituent nations.^[55]

Immigration and assimilation[link]

Although England has not been conquered since the Norman conquest nor extensively settled since, it has been the destination of varied numbers of migrants at different periods from the seventeenth century. While some members of these groups maintain a separate ethnic identity, others have assimilated and intermarried with the English. Since Oliver Cromwell's resettlement of the Jews in 1656, there have been waves of Jewish immigration from Russia in the nineteenth century and from Germany in the twentieth.^[56]

After the French king Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau, an estimated 50,000 Protestant Huguenots fled to England.^[57] Due to sustained and sometimes mass emigration from Ireland, current estimates indicate that around 6 million people in the UK have at least one grandparent born in Ireland.^[58]

There has been a black presence in England since at least the 16th century due to the slave trade and an Indian presence since the mid 19th century because of the British Raj.^[59] Black and Asian proportions have grown in England as immigration from the British Empire and the subsequent Commonwealth of Nations was encouraged due to labour shortages during post-war rebuilding.^[60] However, these groups are often still considered to be ethnic minorities and research has shown that black and Asian people in the UK are more likely to identify as British rather than with one of the state's four constituent nations, including England.^[61]

Current national and political identity[link]

The 1990s witnessed a resurgence of English national identity.^[62] Survey data shows a rise in the number of people in England describing their national identity as English and a fall in the number describing themselves as British.^[63] Scholars and journalists have noted a rise in English self-consciousness, with increased use of the English flag, particularly at football matches where the Union flag was previously more commonly flown by fans.^[64][65]

This perceived rise in English self-consciousness has generally been attributed to the devolution in the late 1990s of some powers to the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales.^[62][66] In policy areas for which the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have responsibility, the UK Parliament votes on laws that consequently only apply to England. Because the Westminster Parliament is composed of MPs from throughout the UK, this has given rise to the "West Lothian question", a reference to the situation in which MPs representing constituencies outside England can vote on matters affecting only England, but MPs cannot vote on the same matters in relation to the other parts of the UK.^[67] Consequently, groups such as the Campaign for an English Parliament have called for the creation of a devolved English Parliament, claiming that there is now a discriminatory democratic deficit against the English. The establishment of an English parliament has also been backed by a number of Scottish and Welsh nationalists.^[68][69] Writer Paul Johnson has suggested that like most dominant groups, the English have only demonstrated interest in their ethnic self-definition when they were feeling oppressed.^[70]

John Curtice argues that "In the early years of devolution...there was little sign" of an English backlash against devolution for Scotland and Wales, but that more recently survey data shows tentative signs of "a form of English nationalism...beginning to emerge among the general public".^[71] Michael Kenny, Richard English and Richard Hayton, meanwhile, argue that the resurgence in English nationalism predates devolution, being observable in the early 1990s, but that this resurgence does not necessarily have negative implications for the perception of the UK as a political union.^[72] Others question whether devolution has led to a rise in English national identity at all, arguing that survey data fails to portray the complex nature of national identities, with many people considering themselves both English and British.^[73]

Recent surveys of public opinion on the establishment of an English parliament have given widely varying conclusions. In the first five years of devolution for Scotland and Wales, support in England for the establishment of an English parliament was low at between 16 and 19 per cent, according to successive British Social Attitudes Surveys.^[74] A report, also based on the British Social Attitudes Survey, published in December 2010 suggests that only 29 per cent of people in England support the establishment of an English parliament, though this figure had risen from 17 per cent in 2007.^[75] One 2007 poll carried out for BBC Newsnight, however, found that 61 per cent would support such a parliament being established.^[76] Krishan Kumar notes that support for measures to ensure that only English MPs can vote on legislation that applies only to England is generally higher than that for the establishment of an English parliament, although support for both varies depending on the timing of the opinion poll and the wording of the question.^[77] Electoral support for English nationalist parties is also low, even though there is public support for many of the policies they espouse.^[78] The English Democrats gained just 64,826 votes in the 2010 UK general election, accounting for 0.3 per cent of all votes cast in England.^[79] Kumar argued in 2010 that "despite devolution and occasional bursts of English nationalism – more an expression of exasperation with the Scots or Northern Irish – the English remain on the whole satisfied with current constitutional arrangements".^[80]

English diaspora[link]

George Washington 1st President of the United States had English ancestors.^[81] Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin, 1st and 2nd Prime Minister of Australia both had English parents.

From the earliest times English people have left England to settle in other parts of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but it is not possible to identify their numbers, as British censuses have historically not invited respondents to identify themselves as English.^[82] However, the census does record place of birth, revealing that 8.08% of Scotland's population,^[83] 3.66% of the population of Northern Ireland^[84] and 20% of the Welsh population were born in England.^[85] Similarly, the census of the Republic of Ireland does not collect information on ethnicity, but it does record that there are over 200,000 people living in Ireland who were born in England and Wales.^[86]

English emigrant and ethnic descent communities are found across the world, and in some places, settled in significant numbers. Substantial populations descended from English colonists and immigrants exist in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.

United States[link]

According to the American Community Survey in 2009 data, Americans reporting English ancestry made up an estimated 9.0% of the total U.S. population, and form the third largest European ancestry group after German Americans and Irish Americans.^[2] However, demographers regard this as an undercount, as the index of inconsistency is high, and many, if not most, people from English stock have a tendency to identify simply as Americans^{[87][88][89][90]} or, if of mixed European ancestry, nominate a more recent and differentiated ethnic group.^[91]

Throughout the nineteenth century, England was the largest investor in American land development, railroads, mining, cattle ranching, and heavy industry. Perhaps because English settlers gained easy acceptance, they founded few organizations dedicated to preserving the traditions of their homeland. In the 2000 United States Census, 24,509,692 Americans described their ancestry as wholly or partly English. In addition, 1,035,133 recorded British ancestry.^[92]

In the 1980 United States Census, over 49 million (49,598,035) Americans claimed English ancestry, at the time around 26.34% of the total population and largest reported group which, even today, would make them the largest ethnic group in the United States.^[93][94]

Canada[link]

In the 2006 Canadian Census, 'English' was the most common ethnic origin (ethnic origin refers to the ethnic or cultural group(s) to which the respondent's ancestors belong^[95]) recorded by respondents; 6,570,015 people described themselves as wholly or partly English, 16% of the population.^[96] On the other hand people identifying as Canadian but not English may have previously identified as English before the option of identifying as Canadian was available.^[97]

Australia[link]

In Australia, the 2006 Australian Census recorded 6,298,945 people who described their ancestry, but not ethnicity, as 'English'. 1,425,559 of these people recorded that both their parents were born overseas.

Other communities[link]

Significant numbers of people with at least some English ancestry also live in Scotland and Wales, as well as in Ireland, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Since the 1980s there have been increasingly large numbers of English people, estimated at over 3 million, permanently or semi-permanently living in Spain and France, drawn there by the climate and cheaper house prices.^[98]

Culture[link]

This section requires expansion.

The culture of England is sometimes difficult to separate clearly from the culture of the United Kingdom,^[99] so influential has English culture been on the cultures of the British Isles and, on the other hand, given the extent to which other cultures have influenced life in England.

See also[link]

Language:

• Anglicisation
• Anglosphere
• English language
• Old English language
• Cumbric language

Diaspora:

• Anglo-Scot
• Anglo-Irish
• English American
• English Australian
• Anglo Argentines
• English Chilean
• English Canadian
• List of Anglo-Indians
• English Brazilian
• New Zealand European
• Anglo-Indian
• Anglo-Burmese
• Anglo-African
• Metis people

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Expert Links: English Family History and Genealogy Great for tracking down historical inhabitants of England.
• Condor, Susan; Gibson, Stephen; Abell, Jackie (2006). "English identity and ethnic diversity in the context of UK constitutional change". Ethnicities 6 (2): 123–158. DOI:10.1177/1468796806063748. http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/uploads/SusanCondor20080120T164935.pdf. 
• Kate Fox (2004). Watching the English. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-81886-7. 
• Kumar, Krishan (2003). The Making of English National Identity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-77736-4. 
• Kumar, Krishan (2010). "Negotiating English identity: Englishness, Britishness and the future of the United Kingdom". Nations and Nationalism 16 (3): 469–487. DOI:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2010.00442.x. 
• Paxman, Jeremy (1999). The English. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-026723-9. 

Further reading[link]

• Robert J.C. Young (2008). The Idea of English Ethnicity. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 1-4051-0129-6. 
• BBC Nations Articles on England and the English
• The British Isles Information on England
• Mercator's Atlas Map of England ("Anglia") circa 1564.
• Viking blood still flowing; BBC; 3 December 2001.
• UK 2001 Census showing 49,138,831 people from all ethnic groups living in England.
• Tory MP leads English protest over census; The Telegraph; 23 April 2001.
• On St. George's Day, What's Become Of England?; CNSNews.com; 23 April 2001.
• Watching the English – an anthropologist's look at the hidden rules of English behaviour.
• The True-Born Englishman, by Daniel Defoe.
• The Effect of 1066 on the English Language Geoff Boxell
• BBC "English and Welsh are races apart"
• New York Times, When English Eyes Are Smiling Article on the common English and Irish ethnicity
• Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration
• Origins of Britons – Bryan Sykes

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Barrington Levy
Barrington Levy in Stockholm, Sweden
Background information
Born	(1964-04-30) 30 April 1964 (age 48)
Origin	Clarendon, Jamaica
Genres	Reggae, dancehall, reggae fusion, ragga Jungle
Years active	1976–present
Labels	MCA Records
Website	www.barringtonlevy.net

Barrington Levy (born 30 April 1964, Clarendon, Jamaica)^[1] is a reggae and dancehall artist from Jamaica.

Career[link]

In 1976, Levy formed a band with his cousin, Everton Dacres, called the Mighty Multitude; the pair released "My Black Girl" in 1977.^[1][2] Levy established his solo career the next year with "A Long Time Since We Don't Have No Love";^[2] though the single was a failure, the fourteen year old was a popular performer at Jamaican dancehalls.^[3] In 1979, Levy met Henry "Junjo" Lawes and Hyman Wright, both record producers, and recorded several singles with the Roots Radics, including "Al Yah We Deh", "Looking My Love", "Englishman", "Skylarking", "Wedding Ring Aside" and "Collie Weed", all of which became hits and established Levy's career. Levy's next few singles were similarly successful, including "Shine Eye Girl", "Wicked Intention", "Jumpy Girl", "Disco Music", "Reggae Music", "Never Tear My Love Apart", "Jah", "You Made Me So Happy" and "When You're Young and in Love". Levy then recorded several duets with Toyan, Jah Thomas and Trinity, and appeared at Reggae Sunsplash in 1980 and 1981.^[2] Although albums were not terribly important in Jamaica at the time, Levy released four albums before 1980: Shaolin Temple, Bounty Hunter, Shine Eye Gal (United Kingdom) and Englishman, a critically acclaimed record. His success led to many earlier studio and sound system performances being reissued without his consent, releases he described as "joke business".^[2][4]

By the time his 1980 album Robin Hood was released, Levy was one of the biggest Jamaican stars, and saw his international fame growing as well, especially in the United Kingdom. Taking a break from albums, Levy then released a series of hit singles, including "Mary Long Tongue", "In the Dark", "Too Poor", "I Have a Problem", "Even Tide Fire a Disaster", "I'm Not in Love", "You Have It", "Love of Jah", "Under Mi Sensi", "Tomorrow Is Another Day", "Robberman", "Black Roses", "My Woman" and "Money Move".^[2] He began working with Paul "Jah Screw" Love and toured the UK in 1984, where he enjoyed a big hit on the reggae charts with "Under Mi Sensi", which was followed by the crossover hit "Here I Come", which reached number 41 in the UK Singles Chart in 1985.^[5] He returned to LPs with Lifestyle and Money Move, followed by a British hit album called Here I Come; Levy received the Best Vocalist prize at the British Reggae Awards in 1984.^[2] The late 1980s saw Levy, now in his twenties, slow down his recorded output, though he continued to perform and record regularly, and played at Sunsplash every year from 1987 to 1995.^[2] His fortunes were revived by two cover versions of Bob Andy songs - "My Time" and "Too Experienced", both produced by Jah Screw,^[1] and he was signed by Island Records in 1991 for the Divine album.^[4] In 1991 he returned to the UK chart with "Tribal Base", a single by Rebel MC featuring Levy and Tenor Fly, which reached number 20.^[2] In 1993, Levy tried to break in the United States with the Barrington album, produced by Lee Jaffe, Andre Betts and Sly & Robbie, but it failed to give him the breakthrough he wanted and his relationship with MCA Records was short-lived.^[2]

In the 1990s, Levy continued to release periodic hits in Jamaica, and more rarely in the UK, although his vocals were sampled and used in many underground and released jungle tunes. In 1998, he released Living Dangerously, which included a collaboration with one of Jamaica's most prolific deejays, Bounty Killer, and with Snoop Dogg. The release was one of Levy's most successful since the start of the 1990s, and saw him finally achieve some success in the US.^[3] Levy performed on two tracks on Long Beach Dub All Stars 1999 album Right Back, and also played a few shows with the band. He was featured on a 1999 track by the Rascalz titled "Top Of The World", also featuring K-os. Levy also appeared on two singles by rapper Shyne (notably Shyne's 2000 debut single, "Bad Boyz"), and on a track for drum and bass artist Aphrodite's 2000 album Aftershock. "Here I Come" returned to the charts in 2001, with a new version by Levy and Talisman P reaching number 37 in the UK.^[6]

In 2004, he contributed to a track on the album White People by Handsome Boy Modeling School, a project by Prince Paul and Dan the Automator. He also did some collaborations with Slightly Stoopid on their 2005 album Closer To The Sun. Most recently, Levy made a guest appearance on the single "No Fuss" by Red-1 of the Rascalz, from his 2007 album Beg For Nothing.

"Here I Come" is also featured in Saints Row 2 and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.

He also appeared on a demo for Jadakiss' latest album The Last Kiss called Hard Times

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Bounty Hunter (1979) Jah Life
• Shine Eye Gal (1979), Burning Sounds
• Englishman (1979), Greensleeves
• Robin Hood (1980), Greensleeves
• Doh Ray Me (1980), JB
• Run Come Ya! (1981), Jah Life
• 21 Girls Salute (1982), Jah Life
• Poor Man Style (1983), Trojan
• Lifestyle (1983), GG's
• Teach Me Culture (1983), Live & Learn
• Money Move (1983), Powerhouse
• Here I Come (1984), Greensleeves
• Barrington Levy Meets Frankie Paul (1984), Ariwa - with Frankie Paul
• Barrington Levy (1984), Clocktower
• Prison Oval Rock (1985), Volcano
• Open Book (1985), Tuff Gong
• Clash Of The 80s (1986), Cornerstone - with Cocoa Tea
• Love the Life You Live (1988), Time
• Live and Learn Presents Beres Hammond and Barrington Levy (1990), Live & Learn - with Beres Hammond
• Divine (1991), Island/Mango
• Turning Point (1992), Greensleeves
• Barrington (1993), MCA
• Duets (1995), RAS - also released as DJ Counteraction (1995), Greensleeves
• Time Capsule (1996), RAS - recorded 1982
• Living Dangerously (1998), Breakaway
• Too Experienced: The Best of Barrington Levy (1998)
• Wanted (2005), 2B1 - CD+DV
• The Lost Mixes From King Tubbys Studio (2005)
• Teach The Youth (2008)

New songs since 2000[link]

• Barrington Levy - Full Control (feat. Shaggy)
• Barrington Levy - Caan Hold Us Down (feat. Gentleman & Daddy Rings)
• Barrington Levy - The Worlds Gone Mad (feat. Handsome Boy Modeling School)
• Barrington Levy - Bad Boyz (feat. Shyne)
• Barrington Levy - Boonie & Shyne (feat. Shyne)
• Barrington Levy - All Over Me (feat. Aphrodite)
• Barrington Levy - Don´t Turn Off The Light (feat. Varon)
• Barrington Levy - See No Other Way (feat. Slightly Stoopid)
• Barrington Levy - No Fuss (feat. Red1)
• Barrington Levy - No Fuss (Reggaeton/Dancehall Remix) (feat. Red1)
• Barrington Levy - Free Tempo (feat. Fat Joe & Tempo)
• Barrington Levy - Free Tempo (Remix) (feat. Tempo, Mexicano 777, MC Ceja, getto & Gastam)
• Barrington Levy - Free Tempo (Mambo Remix) (feat. Omega, Tempo & Fuego^{[disambiguation needed ]})
• Barrington Levy - Delilah (feat. Wyclef Jean)
• Barrington Levy - Gangster (feat. Vybz Kartel & Khago)
• Barrington Levy - No War (feat. Kardinal Offishall)
• Barrington Levy - No War (Remix) (feat. Busta Rhymes & Kardinal Offishall)
• Barrington Levy - No War (Remix) (feat. Busta Rhymes, Kardinal Offishall & Lil Wayne)
• Barrington Levy - Be Strong
• Barrington Levy - Murderer (feat. Snoop Dogg & Mims)
• Barrington Levy - Mr. DJ (feat. Foxy Brown^{[disambiguation needed ]})
• Barrington Levy - Murderation (feat. Gyptian)
• Barrington Levy - Hard Times (feat. Jadakiss)
• Barrington Levy - Only You
• Barrington Levy - Soldados (feat. Daddy Yankee & Ñengo Flow)
• Barrington Levy - Welcome To My Gangsters Hood (feat. DJ Khaled, T-Pain, Vybz Kartel, Khago & Lil Wayne)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Discography

Noël Coward, 1972

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 – 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".^[1]

Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit, have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, in addition to well over a dozen musical theatre works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues), poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance, and a three-volume autobiography. Coward's stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, during which he starred in many of his own works.

At the outbreak of World War II, Coward volunteered for war work, running the British propaganda office in Paris. He also worked with the Secret Service, seeking to use his influence to persuade the American public and government to help Britain. Coward won an Academy Honorary Award in 1943 for his naval film drama, In Which We Serve, and was knighted in 1969. In the 1950s he achieved fresh success as a cabaret performer, performing his own songs, such as "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", "London Pride" and "I Went to a Marvellous Party".

His plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. Coward did not publicly acknowledge his homosexuality, but it was discussed candidly after his death by biographers including Graham Payn, his long-time partner, and in Coward's diaries and letters, published posthumously. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Coward was born in 1899 in Teddington, Middlesex, a suburb of London. His parents were Arthur Sabin Coward (1856–1937), a piano salesman, and Violet Agnes Coward (1863–1954), daughter of Henry Gordon Veitch, a captain and surveyor in the Royal Navy.^[2] Noël Coward was the second of their three sons, the eldest of whom had died in 1898 at the age of six.^[3] Coward's father lacked ambition and industry, and family finances were often poor. Coward was bitten by the performing bug early and appeared in amateur concerts by the age of seven. He attended the Chapel Royal Choir School as a young child. He had little formal schooling but was a voracious reader.^[4]

Encouraged by his ambitious mother, who sent him to a dance academy in London,^[5] Coward's first professional engagement was in January 1911 as Prince Mussel in the children's play The Goldfish.^[6] In Present Indicative, his first volume of memoirs, Coward wrote:

One day ... a little advertisement appeared in the Daily Mirror.... It stated that a talented boy of attractive appearance was required by a Miss Lila Field to appear in her production of an all-children fairy play: The Goldfish. This seemed to dispose of all argument. I was a talented boy, God knows, and, when washed and smarmed down a bit, passably attractive. There appeared to be no earthly reason why Miss Lila Field shouldn't jump at me, and we both believed that she would be a fool indeed to miss such a magnificent opportunity.^[7]

The leading actor-manager Charles Hawtrey, whom the young Coward idolised and from whom he learned a great deal about the theatre, cast him in the children's play Where the Rainbow Ends. Coward played in the piece in 1911 and 1912 at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End.^[8][9] In 1912 Coward also appeared at the Savoy Theatre in An Autumn Idyll (as a dancer in the ballet) and at the London Coliseum in A Little Fowl Play, by Harold Owen, in which Hawtrey starred.^[10] Italia Conti engaged Coward to appear at the Liverpool Repertory Theatre in 1913, and in the same year he was cast as the Lost Boy Slightly in Peter Pan.^[11] He reappeared in Peter Pan the following year, and in 1915 he was again in Where the Rainbow Ends.^[12] He worked with other child actors in this period, including Hermione Gingold (whose mother threatened to turn "that naughty boy" out);^[13] Fabia Drake; Esmé Wynne, with whom he collaborated on his earliest plays; Alfred Willmore, later known as Micheál MacLíammóir; and Gertrude Lawrence who, Coward wrote in his memoirs, "gave me an orange and told me a few mildly dirty stories, and I loved her from then onwards."^[9][14][15]

Coward in his early teens

In 1913, when Coward was 14, he became the protégé and probably the lover of Philip Streatfeild, a society painter.^[16] Streatfeild introduced him to Mrs Astley Cooper and her high society friends.^[17] Streatfeild died from tuberculosis in 1915, but Mrs Astley Cooper continued to encourage her late friend's protégé, who remained a frequent guest at her estate, Hambleton Hall.^[18]

Coward continued to perform during most of World War I, appearing at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in 1916 in The Happy Family^[15] and on tour with Amy Brandon Thomas's company in Charley's Aunt. In 1917, he appeared in The Saving Grace, a comedy produced by Hawtrey. Coward recalled in his memoirs, "My part was reasonably large and I was really quite good in it, owing to the kindness and care of Hawtrey's direction. He took endless trouble with me... and taught me during those two short weeks many technical points of comedy acting which I use to this day."^[19]

In 1918, Coward was drafted into the Artists Rifles but was assessed as unfit for active service because of a tubercular tendency, and he was discharged on health grounds after nine months.^[20] That year he appeared in the D. W. Griffith film Hearts of the World in an uncredited role. He sold short stories to several magazines to help his family financially.^[4] He also began writing plays, collaborating on the first two (Ida Collaborates (1917) and Women and Whisky (1918)) with his friend Esmé Wynne.^[21] His first solo effort as a playwright was The Rat Trap (1918) which was eventually produced at the Everyman Theatre, Hampstead, in October 1926.^[22] During these years, he met Lorn McNaughtan,^[23] who became his private secretary and served in that capacity for more than forty years, until her death.^[4]

Inter-war successes[link]

In 1920, at the age of 20, Coward starred in his own play, the light comedy I'll Leave It to You. After a tryout in Manchester, it opened in London at the New Theatre (renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in 2006), his first full-length play in the West End.^[24] Neville Cardus's praise in The Manchester Guardian was grudging.^[25] Notices for the London production were mixed, but encouraging.^[4] The Observer commented, "Mr Coward... has a sense of comedy, and if he can overcome a tendency to smartness, he will probably produce a good play one of these days."^[26] The Times, on the other hand, was enthusiastic: "It is a remarkable piece of work from so young a head – spontaneous, light, and always 'brainy'."^[27]

The play ran for a month (and was Coward's first play seen in America),^[24] after which Coward returned to acting in works by other writers, starring as Ralph in The Knight of the Burning Pestle in Birmingham and then London.^[28] He did not enjoy the role, finding Francis Beaumont and his sometime collaborator John Fletcher "two of the dullest Elizabethan writers ever known ... I had a very, very long part, but I was very, very bad at it".^[29] Nevertheless, The Manchester Guardian thought that Coward got the best out of the role,^[30] and The Times called the play "the jolliest thing in London".^[31]

Coward completed a one-act satire, The Better Half, about a man's relationship with two women. It had a short run at The Little Theatre, London, in 1922. The critic St. John Ervine wrote of the piece, "When Mr Coward has learned that tea-table chitter-chatter had better remain the prerogative of women he will write more interesting plays than he now seems likely to write."^[32] The play was thought to be lost until a typescript was found in 2007 in the archive of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, the official censor of stage plays in the UK until 1968.^[33]

In 1921, Coward made his first trip to America, hoping to interest producers there in his plays. Although he had little luck, he found the Broadway theatre stimulating.^[4] He absorbed its smartness and pace into his own work, which brought him his first real success as a playwright with The Young Idea. The play opened in London in 1923, after a provincial tour, with Coward in one of the leading roles.^[34] The reviews were good: "Mr Noël Coward calls his brilliant little farce a 'comedy of youth', and so it is. And youth pervaded the Savoy last night, applauding everything so boisterously that you felt, not without exhilaration, that you were in the midst of a 'rag'."^[35] One critic, who noted the influence of George Bernard Shaw on Coward's writing, thought more highly of the play than of Coward's newly found fans: "I was unfortunately wedged in the centre of a group of his more exuberant friends who greeted each of his sallies with 'That's a Noëlism!'"^[36] The play ran in London from 1 February to 24 March 1923, after which Coward turned to revue, co-writing and performing in André Charlot's London Calling!^[37]

Coward with Lilian Braithwaite, his co-star in The Vortex and mother of his close friend Joyce Carey

In 1924, Coward achieved his first great critical and financial success as a playwright with The Vortex. The story is about a nymphomaniac socialite and her cocaine-addicted son (played by Coward). Some saw the drugs as a mask for homosexuality,^[38] while Kenneth Tynan later described it as "a jeremiad against narcotics with dialogue that sounds today not so much stilted as high-heeled".^[39] The Vortex was considered shocking in its day for its depiction of sexual vanity and drug abuse among the upper classes. Its notoriety and fiery performances attracted large audiences, justifying a move from a small suburban theatre to a larger one in the West End.^[40] Coward, still having trouble finding producers, raised the money to produce the play himself. During the run of The Vortex, Coward met Jack Wilson, an American stockbroker (later a director and producer), who became his business manager and lover. Wilson used his position to steal from Coward, but the playwright was in love and accepted both the larceny and Wilson's heavy drinking.^[41]

The success of The Vortex in both London and America caused a great demand for new Coward plays. In 1925 he premiered Fallen Angels, a three-act comedy that amused and shocked audiences with the spectacle of two middle-aged women slowly getting drunk while awaiting the arrival of their mutual lover.^[42] Hay Fever, the first of Coward's plays to gain an enduring place in the mainstream theatrical repertoire, also appeared in 1925. It is a comedy about four egocentric members of an artistic family who casually invite acquaintances to their country house for the weekend and bemuse and enrage each other's guests. Some writers have seen elements of Coward's old mentor, Mrs Astley Cooper, and her set in the characters of the family.^[43] By the 1970s the play was recognised as a classic, described in The Times as a "dazzling achievement; like The Importance of Being Earnest, it is pure comedy with no mission but to delight, and it depends purely on the interplay of characters, not on elaborate comic machinery."^[44] By June 1925 Coward had four shows running in the West End: The Vortex, Fallen Angels, Hay Fever and On With the Dance.^[45] Coward was turning out numerous plays and acting in his own works and others'. Soon, his frantic pace caught up with him, and he collapsed on stage in 1926 while starring in a stage adaptation of The Constant Nymph and had to take an extended rest in Hawaii.^[41]

Other Coward works produced in the mid-to-late 1920s included the plays Easy Virtue (1926), a drama about a divorcée's clash with her snobbish in-laws; The Queen Was in the Parlour, a Ruritanian romance; This Was a Man (1926), a comedy about adulterous aristocrats; The Marquise (1927), an eighteenth-century costume drama; Home Chat (1927), a comedy about a married woman's fidelity; and the revues On With the Dance (1925) and This Year of Grace (1928). None of these shows has entered the regular repertoire, but the last introduced one of Coward's best-known songs, "A Room with a View".^[46] His biggest failure in this period was the play Sirocco (1927), which concerns free love among the wealthy. It starred Ivor Novello, of whom Coward said, "the two most beautiful things in the world are Ivor's profile and my mind".^[47] Theatregoers hated the play, showing violent disapproval at the curtain calls and spitting at Coward as he left the theatre.^[41] Coward later said of this flop, "My first instinct was to leave England immediately, but this seemed too craven a move, and also too gratifying to my enemies, whose numbers had by then swollen in our minds to practically the entire population of the British Isles."^[48]

By then one of the world's highest-earning writers, with an annual income in 1929 of £50,000,^[49] Coward thrived during the Great Depression, writing a succession of popular hits.^[50] These ranged from large-scale spectaculars to intimate comedies. Examples of the former were the operetta Bitter Sweet (1929), about a woman who elopes with her music teacher, and the historical extravaganza Cavalcade (1931) at Drury Lane, about thirty years in the lives of two families, which required a huge cast, gargantuan sets and a complex hydraulic stage. Its 1933 film adaptation won the Academy Award for best picture. Coward's intimate-scale hits of the period included Private Lives (1930) and Design for Living (1932). In Private Lives, Coward starred alongside his most famous stage partner, Gertrude Lawrence, together with the young Laurence Olivier. It was a highlight of both Coward's and Lawrence's career, selling out in both London and New York. Coward disliked long runs, and after this he made a rule of starring in a play for no more than three months at any venue.^[41] Design for Living, written for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, was so risqué, with its theme of bisexuality and a ménage à trois, that Coward premiered it in New York, knowing that it would not survive the censor in London.^[51]

In 1933, Coward wrote, directed and co-starred with French singer Yvonne Printemps in both London and New York productions of an operetta, Conversation Piece (1933).^[41] Coward next wrote, directed and co-starred with Lawrence in Tonight at 8:30 (1936), a cycle of ten short plays that were shuffled to make a different playbill of three plays each night. One of these plays, Still Life, was expanded into the 1945 David Lean film Brief Encounter.^[52] Tonight at 8:30 was followed by a musical, Operette (1937), from which the most famous number is "The Stately Homes of England", and a revue entitled Set to Music (1938, a Broadway version of his 1932 London revue, Words and Music).^[53] Coward's last pre-war plays were This Happy Breed, a drama about a working-class family, and Present Laughter, a comic self-caricature with an egomaniac actor as the central character. These were first performed in 1942, although they were both written in 1939.^[54]

Between 1929 and 1936, Coward recorded many of his best-known songs for His Master's Voice (HMV), now reissued on CD, including the romantic "I'll See You Again" from Bitter Sweet, the comic "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" from Words and Music, and "Mrs Worthington".^[55]

World War II[link]

With the outbreak of World War II, Coward abandoned the theatre and sought official war work. After running the British propaganda office in Paris, where he concluded that "if the policy of His Majesty's Government is to bore the Germans to death I don't think we have time",^[56] he worked on behalf of British intelligence.^[57] His task was to use his celebrity to influence American public and political opinion in favour of helping Britain.^[58] He was frustrated by British press criticism of his foreign travel while his countrymen suffered at home, but he was unable to reveal that he was acting on behalf of the Secret Service.^[59] In 1942, George VI wished to award Coward a knighthood for his efforts, but was dissuaded by Winston Churchill. Mindful of the public view of Coward's flamboyant lifestyle, Churchill used as his reason Coward's ₤200 fine for contravening currency regulations in 1941.^[59]

Had the Germans invaded Britain, Coward was scheduled to be arrested and killed, as he was in The Black Book along with other figures such as Virginia Woolf, Paul Robeson, Bertrand Russell, C. P. Snow and H. G. Wells. When this came to light after the war, Coward wrote: "If anyone had told me at that time I was high up on the Nazi blacklist, I should have laughed ... I remember 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'."^[60]

Churchill's view was that Coward would do more for the war effort by entertaining the troops and the home front than by intelligence work: "Go and sing to them when the guns are firing – that's your job!"^[61] Coward, though disappointed, followed this advice. He toured, acted and sang indefatigably in Europe, Africa, Asia and America.^[62] He wrote and recorded war-themed popular songs, including "London Pride" and "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans". His London home was wrecked by German bombs in 1941, and he took up temporary residence at the Savoy Hotel.^[63] During one air raid on the area around the Savoy he joined Carroll Gibbons and Judy Campbell in impromptu cabaret to divert the captive guests from their fears.^[64] Another of Coward's wartime projects, as writer, star, composer and co-director (alongside David Lean), was the naval film drama In Which We Serve. The film was popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and he was awarded an honorary certificate of merit at the 1943 Academy Awards ceremony.^[65] Coward played a naval captain, basing the character on his friend Lord Louis Mountbatten. Lean went on to direct and adapt film versions of several Coward plays.^[41]

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.^[41] 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.^[66] The play was later filmed by David Lean. Coward toured during the war years in Blithe Spirit, alternating the piece with his comedy Present Laughter and his working-class drama This Happy Breed.

In Coward's Middle East Diary, he made several statements that offended many Americans. In particular, he commented that he was "less impressed by some of the mournful little Brooklyn boys lying there in tears amid the alien corn with nothing worse than a bullet wound in the leg or a fractured arm".^[67] After protests from both The New York Times and the Washington Post, the Foreign Office urged Coward not to visit the United States in January 1945. He did not return to America again during the war. In the aftermath of the war, Coward wrote an alternate history, Peace In Our Time, a play depicting an England occupied by Nazi Germany.^[50]

Post-war career[link]

Coward's new plays after the war were moderately successful but failed to match the popularity of his pre-war hits.^[68] Relative Values (1951) addresses the culture clash between an English aristocratic family and a Hollywood actress with matrimonial ambitions; South Sea Bubble (1951) is a political comedy set in a British colony; Quadrille (1952) is a drama about Victorian love and elopement; and Nude with Violin (1956, starring John Gielgud in London and Coward in New York) is a satire on modern art.^[69] A revue, Sigh No More (1945), was a moderate success,^[70] but two musicals, Pacific 1860 (1946), a lavish South Seas romance, and Ace of Clubs (1949), set in a night club, were financial failures.^[71] In addition, his friends Charles Cochran and Gertrude Lawrence died in 1951 and 1952, respectively. Despite his disappointments during this period, Coward maintained a high public profile; his performance as King Magnus in Shaw's The Apple Cart for the Coronation season of 1953, co-starring Margaret Leighton, received much coverage in the press,^[72] and his cabaret act, honed during his wartime tours entertaining the troops, was a supreme success, first in London at the Café de Paris, and later in Las Vegas.^[73] The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan wrote:

To see him whole, public and private personalities conjoined, you must see him in cabaret ... he padded down the celebrated stairs ... halted before the microphone on black-suede-clad feet, and, upraising both hands in a gesture of benediction, set about demonstrating how these things should be done. Baring his teeth as if unveiling some grotesque monument, and cooing like a baritone dove, he gave us "I'll See You Again" and the other bat's-wing melodies of his youth. Nothing he does on these occasions sounds strained or arid; his tanned, leathery face is still an enthusiast's.... If it is possible to romp fastidiously, that is what Coward does. He owes little to earlier wits, such as Wilde or Labouchere. Their best things need to be delivered slowly, even lazily. Coward's emerge with the staccato, blind impulsiveness of a machine-gun.^[39]

In 1955, Coward's cabaret act at Las Vegas, recorded live for the gramophone, and released as Noël Coward at Las Vegas^[74] was so successful that CBS engaged him to write and direct a series of three 90-minute television specials for the 1955–1956 season. The first of these, Together With Music, paired Coward with Mary Martin, featuring him in many of the numbers from his Las Vegas act.^[75] It was followed by productions of Blithe Spirit in which he starred with Claudette Colbert, Lauren Bacall and Mildred Natwick and This Happy Breed with Edna Best and Roger Moore. Despite excellent reviews, the audience viewing figures were moderate.^[76]

During the 1950s and 1960s, Coward continued to write musicals and plays. After the Ball, his 1953 adaptation of Lady Windermere's Fan, was the last musical he debuted in the West End; his last two musicals premiered on Broadway. Sail Away (1961), set on a luxury cruise liner, was Coward's most successful post-war musical, with productions in America, Britain and Australia.^[77] The Girl Who Came to Supper, a musical adaptation of The Sleeping Prince (1963), ran for only three months.^[78] He directed the successful 1964 Broadway musical adaptation of Blithe Spirit, called High Spirits. Coward's late plays include a farce, Look After Lulu! (1959), and a tragi-comic study of old age, Waiting in the Wings (1960), both of which were successful despite "critical disdain".^[79] Coward argued that the primary purpose of a play was to entertain, and he made no attempt at modernism, which he felt was boring to the audience although fascinating to the critics. His comic novel, Pomp and Circumstance (1960), about life in a tropical British colony, met with more critical success.^[80] Coward's final stage success came with Suite in Three Keys (1966), a trilogy set in a hotel penthouse suite. He wrote it as his swan song as a stage actor: "I would like to act once more before I fold my bedraggled wings."^[81] The trilogy gained glowing reviews and did good box office business in the UK.^[82] In one of the three plays, A Song at Twilight, Coward abandoned his customary reticence on the subject and played an explicitly homosexual character. The daring piece earned Coward new critical praise.^[83] He intended to star in the trilogy on Broadway but was too ill to travel. Only two of the Suite in Three Keys plays were performed in New York, with the title changed to Noël Coward in Two Keys, starring Hume Cronyn.^[84]

Coward won new popularity in several notable films later in his career, such as Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Our Man in Havana (1959), Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), Boom! (1968) and The Italian Job (1969).^[85] Stage and film opportunities he turned down in the 1950s included an invitation to compose a musical version of Pygmalion (two years before My Fair Lady was written), and offers of the roles of the king in the original stage production of The King and I, and Colonel Nicholson in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai.^[86] Invited to play the title role in the 1962 film Dr. No, he replied, "No, no, no, a thousand times, no."^[87] In the same year, he turned down the role of Humbert Humbert in Lolita, saying, "At my time of life the film story would be logical if the 12-year-old heroine was a sweet little old lady."^[88]

In the mid-1960s and early 1970s successful productions of his 1920s and 1930s plays, and new revues celebrating his music, including Oh, Coward! on Broadway and Cowardy Custard in London, revived Coward's popularity and critical reputation. He dubbed this comeback "Dad's Renaissance".^[89] This began with a hit 1963 revival of Private Lives in London and then New York.^[90] Invited to direct Hay Fever with Edith Evans at the National Theatre, he wrote in 1964, "I am thrilled and flattered and frankly a little flabbergasted that the National Theatre should have had the curious perceptiveness to choose a very early play of mine and to give it a cast that could play the Albanian telephone directory."^[91]

Other examples of "Dad's Renaissance" included a 1968 Off Broadway production of Private Lives at the Theatre de Lys starring Elaine Stritch, Lee Bowman and Betsy von Furstenberg, and directed by Charles Nelson Reilly. Despite this impressive cast, Coward's popularity had risen so high that the theatre poster for the production used an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Coward (pictured)^[92] instead of an image of the production or its stars. The illustration captures how Coward's image had changed by the 1960s: he was no longer seen as the smooth 1930s sophisticate, but as the doyen of the theatre. As The New Statesman wrote in 1964: "Who would have thought the landmarks of the Sixties would include the emergence of Noël Coward as the grand old man of British drama? There he was one morning, flipping verbal tiddlywinks with reporters about "Dad's Renaissance"; the next he was... beside Forster, T. S. Eliot and the OMs, demonstrably the greatest living English playwright."^[93] Time magazine wrote that "in the '60s... his best work, with its inspired inconsequentiality, seemed to exert not only a period charm but charm, period."^[1]

Death and honours[link]

By the end of the 1960s, Coward suffered from arteriosclerosis and, during the run of Suite in Three Keys, he struggled with bouts of memory loss.^[94] This also affected his work in The Italian Job, and he retired from acting immediately afterwards.^[95] He died at his home, Firefly Estate, in Jamaica on 26 March 1973 of heart failure^[44] and was buried three days later on the brow of Firefly Hill, overlooking the north coast of the island. A memorial service was held in St Martin-in-the-Fields in London on 29 May 1973, for which the Poet Laureate, John Betjeman, wrote and delivered a poem in Coward's honour,^[96] John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier read verse and Yehudi Menuhin played Bach. On 28 March 1984 a memorial stone was unveiled by the Queen Mother in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. Thanked by Coward's partner, Graham Payn, for attending, the Queen Mother replied, "I came because he was my friend."^[97]

The Noël Coward Theatre

Coward was knighted in 1969 and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.^[98] He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.^[99]

The Noël Coward Theatre in St Martin's Lane, originally opened in 1903 as the New Theatre and later called the Albery, was renamed in his honour after extensive refurbishment, re-opening on 1 June 2006. A statue of Coward was unveiled by the Queen Mother in the foyer of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1998.^[100] There are also sculptures of Coward displayed in New York and Jamaica.^[101] In 2008 an exhibition devoted to Coward was mounted at the National Theatre in London.^[102] The exhibition was later hosted by the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California.^[103]

Personal life[link]

Coward was homosexual but, following the convention of his times, this was never publicly mentioned. The critic Kenneth Tynan's description in 1953 was close to an acknowledgment of Coward's sexuality: "Forty years ago he was Slightly in Peter Pan, and you might say that he has been wholly in Peter Pan ever since. No private considerations have been allowed to deflect the drive of his career; like Gielgud and Rattigan, like the late Ivor Novello, he is a congenital bachelor."^[39]

Coward firmly believed his private business was not for public discussion, considering "any sexual activities when over-advertised" to be tasteless.^[104] Even in the 1960s, Coward refused to acknowledge his sexual orientation publicly, wryly observing, "There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don't know."^[105] Despite this reticence, he encouraged his secretary Cole Lesley to write a frank biography once Coward was safely dead.^[106] Details of his sexual life emerged; for instance, from his youth Coward had a distaste for penetrative sex.^[107][108]

Coward's most important relationship, which began in the mid-1940s and lasted until his death, was with the South African stage and film actor Graham Payn.^[109] Coward featured Payn in several of his London productions. Payn later co-edited with Sheridan Morley the collection of Coward's diaries, published in 1982. Coward's other relationships included the playwright Keith Winter, actors Louis Hayward and Alan Webb, his manager John (Jack) C. Wilson (1899–1961) and the composer Ned Rorem, who published details of their relationship in his diaries.^[110] Coward had a 19-year friendship with Prince George, Duke of Kent, but biographers differ on whether it was platonic.^[111] According to Payn, Coward maintained that it was simply a friendship.^[112] Coward said, on the duke's death, "I suddenly find that I loved him more than I knew."^[113]

Coward maintained close friendships with many women, including the actress and author Esmé Wynne-Tyson, his first collaborator and constant correspondent; Gladys Calthrop, who designed sets and costumes for many of his works; his secretary and close confidante Lorn Loraine; the actresses Gertrude Lawrence, Joyce Carey and Judy Campbell; and "his loyal and lifelong amitié amoureuse", Marlene Dietrich^[114]

In his profession, Coward was widely admired and loved for his generosity and kindness to those who fell on hard times. Stories are told of the unobtrusive way in which he relieved the needs or paid the debts of old theatrical acquaintances who had no claim on him.^[44] Coward was the president of The Actors' Orphanage, which was supported by the theatrical industry. In that capacity, he befriended the young Peter Collinson, who was in the care of the orphanage. He became Collinson's godfather and helped him to get started in show business. When Collinson was a successful director, he invited Coward to play a role in The Italian Job. Graham Payn also played a small role in the film.^[115]

Coward in his home in Switzerland, 1972.

In the 1950s, Coward left the UK for tax reasons, receiving harsh criticism in the press.^[116] He first settled in Bermuda but later bought houses in Jamaica and Switzerland (in the village of Les Avants, near Montreux), which remained his homes for the rest of his life.^[117] His expatriate neighbours and friends included Joan Sutherland, David Niven, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards in Switzerland^[118] and Ian Fleming and his wife Ann in Jamaica. Coward was a witness at the Flemings' wedding, but his diaries record his exasperation with their constant bickering.^[119]

Coward's political views were Conservative, but not unswervingly so: he despised the government of Neville Chamberlain for its policy of appeasing Nazi Germany, and he differed sharply with Winston Churchill over the abdication crisis of 1936. Whereas Churchill supported Edward VIII's wish to marry "his cutie", Wallis Simpson, Coward thought the king irresponsible, telling Churchill, "England doesn't wish for a Queen Cutie."^[120] Coward disliked propaganda in plays: "The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda."^[121] Nevertheless, his own views sometimes surfaced in his plays: both Cavalcade and This Happy Breed are "overtly Conservative political plays written in the Brechtian epic manner."^[122] In religion, Coward was agnostic. He wrote of his views, "Do I believe in God? I can't say No and I can't say Yes, To me it's anybody's guess."^[123]

Coward spelled his first name with the diæresis ("I didn't put the dots over the 'e' in Noël. The language did. Otherwise it's not Noël but Nool!").^[124] The press and many book publishers failed to follow suit, and his name was printed as 'Noel' in The Times, The Observer and other contemporary newspapers and books.^[125]

The papers of Noël Coward are held in the University of Birmingham Special Collections.^[126]

The Coward image[link]

"Why", asked Coward, "am I always expected to wear a dressing-gown, smoke cigarettes in a long holder and say 'Darling, how wonderful'?"^[127] The answer lay in Coward's assiduous cultivation of a carefully crafted image. As a suburban boy who had been taken up by the upper classes he rapidly acquired the taste for high life: "I am determined to travel through life first class."^[128] He first wore a dressing gown onstage in The Vortex and used the fashion in several of his other famous plays, including Private Lives and Present Laughter.^[129][130] In connection with the National Theatre's 2008 exhibition, The Independent commented, "His famous silk, polka-dot dressing gown and elegant cigarette holder both seem to belong to another era. But 2008 is proving to be the year that Britain falls in love with Noël Coward all over again."^[102]

As soon as he achieved success he began polishing the Coward image: an early press photograph showed him sitting up in bed holding a cigarette holder: "I looked like an advanced Chinese decadent in the last phases of dope."^[131] Soon after that, Coward wrote, "I took to wearing coloured turtle-necked jerseys, actually more for comfort than for effect, and soon I was informed by my evening paper that I had started a fashion. I believe that to a certain extent this was true; at any rate, during the ensuing months I noticed more and more of our seedier West-End chorus boys parading about London in them."^[132] He soon became more cautious about overdoing the flamboyance, advising Cecil Beaton to tone down his outfits: "It is important not to let the public have a loophole to lampoon you."^[133] However, Coward was happy to generate publicity from his lifestyle.^[41] In 1969, he told Time magazine, "I acted up like crazy. I did everything that was expected of me. Part of the job." Time concluded, "Coward's greatest single gift has not been writing or composing, not acting or directing, but projecting a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise."^[1]

Coward's distinctive clipped diction arose from his childhood: his mother was deaf and Coward developed his staccato style of speaking to make it easier for her to hear what he was saying; it also helped him eradicate a slight lisp.^[134] His nickname, "The Master", "started as a joke and became true", according to Coward. It was used of him from the 1920s onwards.^[135] Coward himself made light of it: when asked by a journalist why he was known as "The Master", he replied, "Oh, you know – Jack of all trades, master of none."^[136] He could, however, joke about his own immodesty: "My sense of my importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my sense of my own importance to myself is tremendous."^[137] When a Time interviewer apologised, "I hope you haven't been bored having to go through all these interviews for your [70th] birthday, having to answer the same old questions about yourself", Coward rejoined, "Not at all. I'm fascinated by the subject."^[1]

Critical reputation and legacy[link]

The playwright John Osborne said, "Mr Coward is his own invention and contribution to this century. Anyone who cannot see that should keep well away from the theatre."^[138] Kenneth Tynan wrote in 1964, "Even the youngest of us will know, in fifty years' time, exactly what we mean by 'a very Noel Coward sort of person'."^[39] In praise of Coward's versatility, Lord Mountbatten said, in a tribute on Coward's seventieth birthday, "There are probably greater painters than Noël, greater novelists than Noël, greater librettists, greater composers of music, greater singers, greater dancers, greater comedians, greater tragedians, greater stage producers, greater film directors, greater cabaret artists, greater TV stars. If there are, they are fourteen different people. Only one man combined all fourteen different labels – The Master."^[139]

Coward in 1963

Tynan's was the first generation of critics to realise that Coward's plays might enjoy more than ephemeral success. In the 1930s, Cyril Connolly wrote that they were "written in the most topical and perishable way imaginable, the cream in them turns sour overnight".^[140] What seemed daring in the 1920s and 1930s came to seem old-fashioned in the 1950s, and Coward never replicated the success of his pre-war plays.^[39] By the 1960s, however, it was becoming clear that underneath the witty dialogue and the Art Deco glamour of the inter-war years, Coward's best plays also dealt with recognisable people and familiar relationships.^[141] By the time of his death, The Times was writing of him, "None of the great figures of the English theatre has been more versatile than he", and the paper ranked his plays in "the classical tradition of Congreve, Sheridan, Wilde and Shaw".^[44]

A symposium published in 1999 to mark the centenary of Coward's birth listed some of his major productions scheduled for the year in Britain and North America, including Ace of Clubs, After the Ball, Blithe Spirit, Cavalcade, Easy Virtue, Hay Fever, Present Laughter, Private Lives, Sail Away, A Song at Twilight, The Young Idea and Waiting in the Wings, with stars including Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Ian McKellen, Corin Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave and Elaine Stritch.^[142] In another tribute, Tim Rice said of Coward's songs: "The wit and wisdom of Noël Coward's lyrics will be as lively and contemporary in 100 years' time as they are today",^[121] and many have been recorded by Paul McCartney, Sting, Elton John, Robbie Williams, Pet Shop Boys, The Divine Comedy, Vic Reeves, Joan Sutherland, Ian Bostridge, Damon Albarn, Michael Nyman, and others.^{[143][144][145]}

Coward's music and writings and his characteristic voice and style have been widely parodied and imitated, for instance by Jonathan Meese and in Monty Python, Round the Horne and Privates on Parade.^[146][147] Coward has frequently been depicted as a character in plays,^[148][149] films, television and radio shows, for example, in the 1969 Julie Andrews film Star! (in which Coward was portrayed by his godson, Daniel Massey),^[150] the award-winning BBC sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart^[151] and a BBC Radio 4 series.^[152][153] On stage, characters based on Coward have included Beverly Carlton in the 1939 Broadway play The Man Who Came to Dinner.^[154] A play about the friendship between Coward and Marlene Dietrich, called Lunch with Marlene, by Chris Burgess, ran at the New End Theatre in 2008. The second act presents a musical revue, including Coward songs such as "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans".^[155]

Coward was an early admirer of the plays of Harold Pinter, and backed Pinter's film version of The Caretaker with a £1,000 investment.^[156] Some critics have detected Coward's influence in Pinter's plays.^[157] Tynan compared Pinter's "elliptical patter" to Coward's "stylised dialogue".^[156] Pinter returned the compliment by directing the National Theatre's revival of Blithe Spirit in 1976.^[158]

Plays[link]

For plays that were written more than two years before the original production, a date of composition is given and the second date given is the year when first produced (fp).

Revues, musicals, operetta and songs[link]

Songs[link]

Coward wrote more than three hundred songs. The Noël Coward Society's website, drawing on performing statistics from the publishers and the Performing Rights Society, names "Mad About the Boy" (from Words and Music) as Coward's most popular song, followed, in order, by:

In the society's second tier of favourites are:

As a songwriter, Coward was deeply influenced by Gilbert and Sullivan, although he shared a dislike of their works common in his generation.^[159][160] He recalled: "I was born into a generation that still took light music seriously. The lyrics and melodies of Gilbert and Sullivan were hummed and strummed into my consciousness at an early age. My father sang them, my mother played them... my aunts and uncles, who were legion, sang them singly and in unison at the slightest provocation."^[161] His colleague Terence Rattigan wrote that as a lyricist Coward was "the best of his kind since W. S. Gilbert."^[162]

Films[link]

Coward's plays adapted for film include:

Films in which he participated as actor, screenwriter, director or producer are as follows:^[163]

Notes[link]