Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973)

'My first view of Jamaica was from an altitude of about eight thousand feet. The morning was cloudless and the island was discernible from many miles away. Now, remembering that moment my mind becomes choked with clichés...but of course I didn't know or dream or foresee how familiar that particular sight would become, how many times in the future I was destined to see these green hills and blue mountains rising out of the sea.' (Future Indefinite, 1954, in S. Morley, Out in the Midday Sun, The Paintings of Noel Coward, Oxford, 1988, p. 40)