Songfacts®:

• This jaunty, uptempo love song has long become a standard. Noël Coward borrowed the title from the 1908 novel by E.M. Forster, whose love story is regarded as a critique of Edwardian society. In 1927, Coward suffered a nervous breakdown and burn out after his play This Was A Man which had been banned in England, flopped in the United States. He had been working flat out since 1924 when The Vortex, which he wrote and starred in, took the theatrical world by storm. He booked a ticket to Hong Kong but stopped off in Hawaii for several weeks where he stayed with the Dillingham family to recuperate. The song came into his head one day as he lay dozing in the sun. It went into the revue This Year Of Grace the following year.
• The sheet music was published by Chappell of London. An early recording was made by Billy Elliot on the Edison Bell Winner label; 70 years later it was recorded by no less an artist than Paul McCartney for a Coward tribute album. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2