In the New York Times Book Review, Stephen Koch has written a superb essay on gay actor Noel Coward, and how he served as a spy on behalf of Great Britain during World War II. As we approach Anzac Day, it’s important to remember that some of our lesbian and gay forebears served with pride during that conflict.

Koch relates how Coward was recruited as a spy at the same time as Ian Fleming, author of the original James Bond series of spy novels in later life. As he toured countries, as well as keeping up wartime morale through his comic performance on stage, he was also acting as a courier for secret messages, filed confidential reports on influential people, and was engaged in maintenance of spy networks.  Mind you, Coward’s patriotism wasn’t exactly secret. He was scathing about Britain’s appeasement-oriented Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as early as 1936. By 1938, he was so angry at current official British foreign policy toward Nazi Germany that he punched his old friend Ivor Novello for expressing sympathy for Chamberlain’s Munich stunt.  Senior Diplomat Hugh Vansittart probably recruited Coward in 1937/38,  and dispatched him to Warsaw, Moscow and Helsinki so he could entertain, monitor pro-Nazi VIPs,  and contact local British spy networks.

He may have partied with the pro-Nazi bon vivante Duke of Windsor and his wife Wallis when working in Paris in 1939-40 too, but his recently released confidential correspondence tells quite a different story- he loathed them both for their attitudes, and was only there to keep an eye on them and report any suspicious activity back.

Coward was even invited to the FDR White House, but not solely for pleasurable reasons. Before the bombing of Pearl Harbour and during the dark days after Dunkirk and the Fall of France in 1940, it now seems Coward played a pivotal role in assisting Roosevelt to influence American public opinion in favour of aid to Britain and eventual Allied entry into the conflict in 1941. Cary Grant, a contemporary and also bisexual himself, assisted Coward during this period.

In 1941, his work done, Coward retired to Wales where he wrote the light “Blithe Spirit” about a man and his ghostly wife, which kept up morale on the home front. But behind the scenes, Coward had done much, much more that paved the way for the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany

Strongly Recommended:

Stephen Koch: “The Playboy Was a Spy” New York Review of Books 13.04.08

www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/books/review/Koch-t.html