With more than 60 plays to his name, George Bernard Shaw was an expert at using a little comedy to lighten up a social message. A reformist socialist, he once said: "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world." Shaw was a member of the Fabian Society and a founding member of the London School of Economics and Political Science, now a part of the University of London. He was also an avid amateur photographer.
Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar® (1938), the latter for his work on the film
Pygmalion, which became the basis for the popular
Audrey Hepburn film My Fair Lady. Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize, saying he had no desire for public honors, but he accepted it as a tribute to Ireland instead. He did however reject the monetary award. About the refusal, Shaw famously said, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."
Shaw's first novel,
Immaturity, was written at the age of 23. Yet it did not published until he was 75. Shaw lived to be 94.
