Mystical Times at Noel Coward's: Nights and Days in Jamaica (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798584284718)

"Embraces Jamaica with a mystical sense ... the atmosphere, a sensory adventure garnished with playfulness. A rare achievement." -- Alexander Blackburn, Academy of American Poets Award, International Peace Writing Prize, Author of The Fire Within and The Emergence of Frank Waters: A Critical Reader.

Award-winning, bestselling author, folklorist and storyteller, Gerald Hausman recounts his days in the mid-1980's when he and his wife had a school at the foot of Firefly Hill on the North Coast of Jamaica. The Blue Harbour School of Creative Writing was situated at the home of the late Sir Noel Coward, the celebrated 20th century English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit and flamboyance, whose houseguests over the years included Queen Elizabeth II, former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, and actors Lord Laurence Olivier, Sophia Loren, Dame Elizabeth Taylor, Sir Alec Guinness, Peter O'Toole and Sir Richard Burton. Coward built the main villa in 1948 to get away from the tyranny of taxes in England and a few years later, when too many guests infiltrated his dream, he moved uphill 1,500 feet and built another bolt hole that he called Firefly. He lived and worked there until he died in 1978.

Blue Harbour had been all but abandoned when the Hausmans first rented it in 1986. There were still Coward clothes in the closets and the musty smell of Rothmans cigarettes clung to the walls. The place reeked of decadence, beauty and a lost other-worldly ambience of gracious days gone by. Set in a protective cove and overlooking Cabarita Island with the Blue Mountains hanging mistily above the lower range of the John Crows, Blue Harbour was where the 17th century pirate Henry Morgan turned in his buccaneer's badge for the governorship of Jamaica.

Spend your nights and days with master storyteller Gerald Hausman during his time in the mystical Jamaica of a bygone era, surrounded by the spirits and ghosts haunting Noel Coward's Firefly and Blue Harbour.