01/08/2026
On 1 August 1944, English playwright, composer, and entertainer, Noƫl Coward, entertains the men of the Eastern Fleet aboard HMS Victorious, in Trincomalee, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Coward (1899-1973) renowned for his wit, is pictured standing at the microphone on a flag-bedecked stage on the aircraft lift, with Norman Hackforth at the piano.
After the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942, the Royal Navy's East Indies Station was moved to Colombo and then to Trincomalee.
With the outbreak of in 1939, Coward abandoned the theatre and sought official war work. After running the British propaganda office in Paris, he worked on behalf of British intelligence. His task was to use his celebrity to influence American public and political opinion in favour of helping Britain. 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.
Had the Germans invaded Britain, Coward was scheduled to be arrested and killed, as he was in 'The Black Book' along with other public 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 N**i 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'."
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 ā that's your job!" Coward consequently toured, acted and sang indefatigably in Europe, Africa, Asia and America.
He wrote and recorded war-themed popular songs, including "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans" with the lines:
"And their Beethoven and Bach are really far worse than their bite
Let's be meek to them -
And turn the other cheek to them
And try to bring out their latent sense of fun."
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. Coward played a naval captain, basing the character on his friend Lord Louis Mountbatten.
