Top 10 facts about George Bernard Shaw

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw was born 160 years ago on July 26, 1856.

1. He hated the name George and always preferred to be called simply Bernard Shaw.

2. He is the only person to have won both a Nobel Prize (for Literature in 1925) and an Oscar (for the screenplay of his play Pygmalion in 1938).

3. Born in Dublin he began work aged 15 as a junior clerk in a Dublin estate agency at a salary of £18 a year.

4. He later described the work as a “damnable waste of human life”.

5. Throughout his life he campaigned strongly for both socialism and alphabet reform…

6. …his new alphabet was designed to eliminate inconsistencies in English spelling. He left a large amount of money to promote his new alphabet but it never became popular.

7. He was a lifelong vegetarian and opposed British involvement in the First World War.

8. Because of his anti-war pamphlets and speeches he was expelled from the Dramatists’ Club.

9. “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” (George Bernard Shaw).

10. He died aged 94 of kidney problems caused by a fall from a ladder while pruning a tree.