George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, as the son of George Carr Shaw, who was in the wholesale grain trade, and Lucinda Elisabeth (Gurly) Shaw, the daughter of an impoverished landowner, Shaw's childhood was troubled. His father was an alcoholic. When Shaw was just short of his sixteenth birthday, his mother left her husband and son and moved with Vandeleur Lee to London, where the two set up a household, along with Shaw's older …

…was written four years after Joan was declared a saint. Shaw died at Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, on November 2, 1950. Shaw was cremated after he died. It was his wish that his ashes be mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte - she had died seven years before, "an old woman bowed and crippled, furrowed and wrinkled," as Shaw depicted her in a letter to H.G. Wells. During his long career, Shaw wrote over 50 plays.