15 euro - 100 Years since George Bernard Shaw won the Nobel Prize for Literature

Born in Dublin 1856, Shaw at 20 moved to London and lived with his mother and sister with the intention of becoming a writer. He had spent many hours as a child wandering around the rooms of the National Gallery of Ireland exploring the collection. The education in artistic style and art history that he received through these visits helped Shaw in his later work as an art critic and the influence of this interest in art can also be seen in his plays. Shaw initially wrote five novels. They were not successful but he managed to earn some income as an arts critic. His persistence eventually paid off with a number of successful plays where Shaw used his art and new-found public profile to express his unconventional and at times controversial views. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 “for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty”. Shaw’s Pygmalion was adapted for film with his screenplay winning him an Oscar. It was later adapted into the popular Broadway musical My Fair Lady. Until 2016, Shaw was the only person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. George Bernard Shaw died in 1950 leaving a legacy as one of the greatest writers of all time with countless essays, five novels and more than 50 plays to his name.