The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill and versatility Coward's writing achieved in the late 1920s. The volume contains his best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immeditate hit when it was first staged in 1930. Coward's sparkling dialogue and repartee have ensured the play's popularity ever since. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929 Noël Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gave me more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Not especially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or its production but as a whole." The Marquise is an "eighteenth century comedy" filled with maids and duels, whilst Post-Mortem is a vilification of war that contains some of Coward's most powerful writing.

This volume brings together Coward's celebrated verse, from snappy epigrams to seven-hundred-line short stories such as 'P&O 1930' and 'Not Yet the Dodo'; from moving war-time encounters to satirical barbs at familiar Coward targets; and from personal reminiscences to occasional verse such as his tribute to Ivor Novello or his counter-attack on Graham Greene. Includes an introduction by Martin Tickner and Coward's long-time companion, Graham Payn.