Noel Coward’s Jamaican retreat

“If this isn’t paradise then tell me where it is” a visitor wrote in Noel Coward’s guest book in Firefly, his hilltop Jamaican home.
 
And this afternoon I sat at his piano (it no longer works because of the humid tropical climate), examine his writing desk, look at the paintings in his studio and even examine his monogrammed towel in his bathroom. Unlike other museums you could handle all the “stuff”.
 
For this is living history, part of “the other Jamaica” on the north east coast unlike the rest of the country notorious for its gangsters and crime.
Here in the early 1950s Errol Flynn moved in bringing with him Hollywood stars for riotous parties.
Noel Coward fell in love with the country after staying with Ian Fleming at Goldeneye . He built first Blue Harbour then Firefly a mountain writing retreat with spectacular sea views (this photo was taken from his garden).
 
Inside the modest house the  walls are covered with photographs of him with all the celebrities of his age including Marlene Dietrich, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Gielgud, Joan Sutherland and Maggie Smith.
 
Even the Queen Mother had lunch with him one day.
 
Today it is a museum with everything exactly as it was when he lived here until his death in 1973.  You expect him to walk in any minute.
 
Now he lies buried at the bottom of his own garden.
  
   
Firefly offers an extraordinary insight into what life was like for the early jet setters before they decamped to Mustique and St Barts and we package holidaymakers arrived.

PS. On a more mundane note I have got mosquito and sand fly bites as a result of sitting out in the evening and early morning on our balcony.