Noël Coward was recruited as a British undercover agent as early as 1938 and was deeply critical of fellow actors who “scuttled off” to Hollywood instead of fighting for their country, according to unpublished letters.

Many of the letters date from the war years – a period only touched on in Coward’s autobiography – and reveal details about his spying activities.

The screenwriter for classic films such as In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter – and whose screen performances included the British spy in Carol Reed’s Our Man in Havana in 1959 – regretted bitterly that tuberculosis and a head injury during training had prevented him from serving his country in the First World War, according to the extensive correspondence.

In 1939 he wrote to Winston Churchill: “This time I am determined to play as much of a part as the powers-that-be allow me . . . You may count on my doing whatever I am called upon to do.”

In 1941, writing to his mother, Violet, he mused: “I cannot feel that dying for one’s country or for what one believes in is any worse than dying in bed of an illness. We all have to die sometime and if I had to die tomorrow at least I have had a magnificent run for my money.” The letters are among more than 500 that have emerged. The vast majority are unpublished. They had been stored for a quarter of a century in two battered leather suitcases in a bank vault in Switzerland, where Coward bought a home in the 1950s. They were placed there after his death in 1973 by Cole Lesley, his long-term companion.

No one knew of the existence of the letters beyond Coward’s estate, which has made them available to Barry Day, a leading Coward scholar, who is publishing them.

The correspondence is particularly complete because Coward kept copies of the letters that he wrote, as well as those he received. Several are from actor-friends such Greta Garbo who, in a letter of 1936, teasingly asked him to marry her – even though he was “completely immune to any female charm”.

Those letters that relate to the war years contradict his own claim that he was recruited on the eve of war in September 1939. Mr Day said: “What wasn’t known was that Coward had been recruited as far back as early 1938 by Sir Robert Vansittart at the Foreign Office to be one of his unofficial team of ‘agents’, who would go about their normal business in Europe and report back on the mood of the countries they visited, what they heard in social conversations.

“Vansittart was a top civil servant who could see war coming, even though his government lords and masters insisted on a policy of ‘appeasement’ towards Hitler. Vansittart wanted to piece together evidence of what Hitler was really planning and what the opinion was among Britain’s European neighbours.”

Coward was dispatched to various countries, including Switzerland, from where, in November 1938, he wrote to Vansittart: “In various conversations I had and listened to, it was apparent that English prestige had dropped considerably but there was no violence about this, just a rather depressed acceptance of the inevitable.”

Just after the war began, Coward was sent to Paris to set up a Bureau of Propaganda, working closely with the French Commissariat d’Information. The letters reflected deep concern for Europe’s future. “We have nothing to worry about but the destruction of civilisation,” he wrote.

When, in 1938, Neville Chamberlain returned to London waving a piece of paper signed by Hitler and Mussolini, Coward ridiculed “that bloody conceited old sod”. With Hollywood stars such as Errol Flynn suspected of strong Nazi sympathies, or at least of anti-English sentiments, Coward was sent to California in 1940 to assess the mood there.

Gracie Fields was among the British actors who were perceived to have betrayed their country by going to America, despite giving concerts to the Forces. Coward wrote: ..“This is a sinister and deadly war, in many ways more so than the last one . . . Some dreadful things are happening to the human spirit.”

In 1940 he wrote to a friend: “What I am doing now is, to me, even more important than a successful play, however well written, well directed and well played . . . We are at war in defence of all that makes their performances possible.”

— Methuen Drama, an imprint of A&C Black, will publish The Letters of Noël Coward on November 12.

The secret missives

During the last ‘war to end wars’ I’m conscious that I made little or no contribution. This time I am determined to play as much of a part as the powers-that-be allow me”
writing to Winston Churchill in 1939

“If I ran away and refused to have anything to do with the war and lived comfortably in Hollywood . . . I should be ashamed to the end of my days”
to his mother, Violet, in 1941

“I snooped around a good deal and flapped my ears . . . The Nazi propaganda . . . is very strong but is falling on the stoniest of stony ground”
reporting from Switzerland in 1938 to Sir Robert Vansittart, of the Foreign Office

“The pre-war past died on the day when Mr Neville Chamberlain returned with such gay insouciance”
writing in 1938

“I have encountered a number of people who appear sceptical of Britain’s ability to . . . overcome the extreme challenges we presently face. I have tried to convince them that, though we may inhabit a small island, we never have been or ever shall be a small people”
assessing the mood in Hollywood in 1940

“I am a trifle saddened by the behaviour of many of my actor countrymen of military age who scuttled off with such inelegant haste”
on British actors who were perceived to have betrayed their country by going to America

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