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Oliver Soden is a writer and broadcaster, and the critically acclaimed author of Michael Tippett: The Biography (2019); Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat (2020); and Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward (2023).
Michael Tippett, the first full-length biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest composers, was hailed by Philip Pullman as a "delight to read"; by the Spectator as "an exceptional piece of work"; and by Gramophone as "nothing short of miraculous". Book of the Year in the Spectator, Times Literary Supplement and Observer, it was read (by the author) for BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, with Sir Derek Jacobi playing Tippett. The book won both a Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Storytelling; it was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown.
Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat, a semi-fictionalised biography of the cat who belonged to eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, was acclaimed as "inspired and original" by Hilary Mantel and as "the most beautiful and haunting book of recent times" by Alexander McCall Smith. Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement, it was championed as "a little classic" by Dame Eileen Atkins on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read.
Masquerade, the first biography of Noël Coward in nearly thirty years, was published in 2023. "This is the biography", wrote the Telegraph in its five-star review, "truthful, sympathetic and thorough – that Coward deserves."
Born in 1990, Soden grew up in Bath and Sussex, and lives in London.
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