Oliver Soden

Oliver Soden (born 1990) is an English biographer. He studied at Lancing College in Sussex and at Clare College, Cambridge.^{[citation needed]}

Soden's first published book was the authorized biography of the English composer Michael Tippett, a task he took over following the death of Dennis Marks. Well received by critics,^[1] Michael Tippett was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and won both the Royal Philharmonic Society Storytelling Award and the Somerset Maugham Award.^{[citation needed]}

His next book, titled Jeoffry the Poet's Cat (2020), purported to be a biography of the 18th-century cat that kept the poet Christopher Smart company during his confinement in a succession of mental asylums. Smart dedicated a poem fragment in Jubilate Agno to his cat, a piece now known as "For I will consider my cat Jeoffry". The Times Literary Supplement chose Jeoffry the Poet's Cat as one of its Books of the Year.^[2]

In 2023, Soden published Masquerade, the first major biography of Noel Coward in 30 years.^[3]

Soden is also a journalist and broadcaster, and has contributed to the Guardian, the Spectator, Prospect Magazine, and the BBC among others.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. Maddocks, Fiona (7 April 2019). "Michael Tippett: The Biography by Oliver Soden review – exhaustively researched, lovingly detailed". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 January 2025.
2. Wild, Min (22 January 2021). "Gravity and waggery". Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 6 January 2025.
3. Maltby, Kate (6 April 2023). "The Masquerade — Noël Coward, the man and the mask". Financial Times. Retrieved 6 January 2025.