Oliver Soden

Oliver Soden is the author of Masquerade – The Lives of Noël Coward , the first new biography in nearly thirty years, published in March 2023 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. In its five-star review the Telegraph described the book as “truthful, sympathetic and thorough” – “this is the biography that Coward deserves.”

Oliver is also the author of a biography of the composer Michael Tippett, and of Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat, a semi-fictionalised biography of the cat who belonged to eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, which was one of the TLS’s books of the year in 2020.

Oliver writes on art, music and literature for the national press, and is a frequent speaker and researcher on radio, including on Radio 3’s long-running programme Private Passions.