0:00:05 > 0:00:08- REPORTER:- The Hertfordshire village of Ayot St Lawrence
0:00:08 > 0:00:10mourns its friend.
0:00:10 > 0:00:13The world mourns one of the dominating figures of our time.
0:00:13 > 0:00:16Gone from its presence but not from its mind
0:00:16 > 0:00:19is the man of whom the Prime Minister has written,
0:00:19 > 0:00:22"As critic, dramatist, man of letters,
0:00:22 > 0:00:25"humourist, social revolutionary and prophet,
0:00:25 > 0:00:28"he was our greatest entertainer and teacher."
0:00:35 > 0:00:38So, in the box here is that wonderful puppet...
0:00:39 > 0:00:41..of Shaw.
0:00:49 > 0:00:51And there he is.
0:00:52 > 0:00:55- In his famous knickerbockers. - Oh, my God, that's brilliant.
0:00:55 > 0:00:56Wow!
0:00:56 > 0:01:00If you have a little look at the head a bit, straight on,
0:01:00 > 0:01:02- that's a bit better.- Oh, yeah.
0:01:02 > 0:01:03There.
0:01:04 > 0:01:08This probably puts how he thought about himself in some context.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11He said, "The Greeks have Aristotle...
0:01:12 > 0:01:14"..the Italians had Leonardo da Vinci,
0:01:14 > 0:01:17"the English had Shakespeare
0:01:17 > 0:01:21"and Ireland has my astonishing self."
0:01:21 > 0:01:24THEY GIGGLE
0:01:43 > 0:01:45Oh, ladies.
0:01:45 > 0:01:47Well, this is a surprise.
0:01:48 > 0:01:52Have you all come to see me, ladies and gentlemen?
0:01:52 > 0:01:54Well...
0:01:54 > 0:01:57I should never have expected this.
0:02:01 > 0:02:04A few words from Mr Bernard Shaw.
0:02:05 > 0:02:08I have always been intrigued by the work of George Bernard Shaw
0:02:08 > 0:02:10but who was he,
0:02:10 > 0:02:12this shy Irish playwright who conquered Britain
0:02:12 > 0:02:14and the English-speaking world?
0:02:14 > 0:02:15Oh, you're real good.
0:02:15 > 0:02:16Thank you, captain.
0:02:16 > 0:02:22A celebrity and a serious thinker who insisted we question everything.
0:02:22 > 0:02:26- I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe.- Oh!
0:02:26 > 0:02:30The winner of an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for Literature.
0:02:30 > 0:02:32I suppose that I am here
0:02:32 > 0:02:36as the next best thing to Shakespeare.
0:02:36 > 0:02:37LAUGHTER
0:02:38 > 0:02:43Shaw wrote about the big issues of his time and of our time -
0:02:43 > 0:02:46poverty, war, feminism, race, fanaticism -
0:02:46 > 0:02:51but always using charm and humour to get people's attention.
0:02:51 > 0:02:53When I talk, at least I talk politics.
0:02:53 > 0:02:58And he sold these big ideas by being larger than life.
0:02:58 > 0:03:03This, ladies and gentlemen, is an exhibition of my profile.
0:03:04 > 0:03:06How was that?
0:03:06 > 0:03:09Shaw invented the idea of the artist as a brand.
0:03:09 > 0:03:11This shy boy from Dublin
0:03:11 > 0:03:15became one of the world's most famous and recognisable men.
0:03:15 > 0:03:18Shall I now become the partly visible man?
0:03:18 > 0:03:21Do you recognise the beard...
0:03:22 > 0:03:25..or must I become a little more visible?
0:03:25 > 0:03:29Even this exaggerated depiction here,
0:03:29 > 0:03:33it's slightly abstract but you can see from it...
0:03:34 > 0:03:36..that it's George Bernard Shaw.
0:03:38 > 0:03:40But I think he would have been very happy to know
0:03:40 > 0:03:42that at the end of the road there was,
0:03:42 > 0:03:47as some people in Dublin call it, a Muriel, in honour of his...
0:03:47 > 0:03:49in honour of his life.
0:03:50 > 0:03:53Sadly, I think Shaw is underappreciated.
0:03:53 > 0:03:56He's the forgotten man of Irish literature.
0:03:56 > 0:03:59His birthplace in Dublin is closed to the public,
0:03:59 > 0:04:03yet people around the city know his name but perhaps not much else.
0:04:03 > 0:04:07So if you want to learn more about him or his big ideas,
0:04:07 > 0:04:09you actually have to start in England.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13He arrived aged 20 and spent three-quarters of his life there,
0:04:13 > 0:04:15yet always felt like a foreigner.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18When I came to London in the 1980s,
0:04:18 > 0:04:20I understood that sense of exile myself.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23Shaw had the outsider's ability to observe,
0:04:23 > 0:04:25to question the way things are.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29And long before he became famous,
0:04:29 > 0:04:32he used to keep warm in the British Library, reading Karl Marx.
0:04:32 > 0:04:36I think it was that time that inspired the great beliefs
0:04:36 > 0:04:38and themes of his life and work.
0:04:39 > 0:04:41"How shall we house our poor?"
0:04:43 > 0:04:47The Practical Politics of Socialism by George Bernard Shaw.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53This is a record of Shaw's speaking engagements.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58"Labour is the source of all wealth...
0:04:59 > 0:05:02"..therefore to the labourers all wealth is due."
0:05:03 > 0:05:06"October the 11th, 1891,
0:05:06 > 0:05:10"Mr G. Bernard Shaw, Fabian, lecture followed by discussion."
0:05:12 > 0:05:14"Practical communism."
0:05:14 > 0:05:15Wow.
0:05:16 > 0:05:21It's interesting that he, kind of, taught himself to become an orator
0:05:21 > 0:05:23because in the early part of his lifetime
0:05:23 > 0:05:27he was a very shy and insecure, young man
0:05:27 > 0:05:31and he became this, kind of, spellbinding orator.
0:05:32 > 0:05:34What a great thing it would have been to go along
0:05:34 > 0:05:39to one of these things and to hear him...to hear him speak.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44Foolish people in easy circumstances flatter themselves
0:05:44 > 0:05:49that there is no such thing as the class war in the British Empire,
0:05:49 > 0:05:53where we are all far too respectable
0:05:53 > 0:05:57to have any vulgar unpleasantness of that sort.
0:05:57 > 0:05:59They deceive themselves.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02We are up to the neck in the class war.
0:06:03 > 0:06:06"The Women's Progressive Society."
0:06:08 > 0:06:11"The London Vegetarian Society."
0:06:11 > 0:06:15He was a vegetarian from the age of 24 and he said that at his funeral
0:06:15 > 0:06:19instead of people coming behind his coffin, there'd be all the animals
0:06:19 > 0:06:22that he hadn't eaten to pay tribute to him.
0:06:23 > 0:06:27He must have been out every single night.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31You get the idea that he never went to sleep.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38To begin with, he was very anxious about could he stand up,
0:06:38 > 0:06:40could he speak,
0:06:40 > 0:06:46but very quickly he found that he was, well, like a good actor.
0:06:46 > 0:06:48He could speak extremely well.
0:06:48 > 0:06:50It's interesting you should say that
0:06:50 > 0:06:54because some people have defined acting as the shy man's revenge.
0:06:57 > 0:07:01Shaw's real need to spread new ideas overcame his natural shyness.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04He understood the power of the spoken word,
0:07:04 > 0:07:08first on a soap box, later on a stage.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12No more so than in Man And Superman,
0:07:12 > 0:07:16a razor-sharp exploration of nature, sex and evolution
0:07:16 > 0:07:20dressed up as a verbose comedy of manners.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23When I read Michael Holroyd's biography,
0:07:23 > 0:07:26he talked about how Shaw himself honed his own speaking
0:07:26 > 0:07:28- on street corners, pamphleteering. - Yes.
0:07:28 > 0:07:32There's something Michael Holroyd writes about Shaw's consonants
0:07:32 > 0:07:35could cut so strongly in a space
0:07:35 > 0:07:37because he knew he had to communicate.
0:07:37 > 0:07:41So I always thought, he's writing for people who really can speak
0:07:41 > 0:07:45and really know how to phrase and lead an idea and land it.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49We don't have that sort of writing. Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-bam-ba-bam.
0:07:50 > 0:07:51It's exciting.
0:07:52 > 0:07:54With a wonderful, instinctive cunning,
0:07:54 > 0:07:57she kept silent and allowed me to glorify her.
0:07:57 > 0:08:01To mistake my own visions, thoughts and feelings for hers.
0:08:01 > 0:08:05I found that when I had touched a woman's imagination...
0:08:05 > 0:08:07LAUGHTER
0:08:07 > 0:08:11..she would allow me to persuade myself that she loved me
0:08:11 > 0:08:14but when my suit was granted,
0:08:14 > 0:08:18she never said, "I'm happy, my love is satisfied",
0:08:18 > 0:08:21she always said first, "At last the barriers are down",
0:08:21 > 0:08:23and second, "When will you come again?"
0:08:23 > 0:08:28- As Jack, you get to say mischievous, provocative things as a man.- Yeah.
0:08:28 > 0:08:32Which is great to say in front of an audience.
0:08:32 > 0:08:35You get to tease and provoke with wit.
0:08:35 > 0:08:37You don't have to insult the audience
0:08:37 > 0:08:41but it's so witty but the ideas are still provocative.
0:08:41 > 0:08:43It's wonderfully human.
0:08:43 > 0:08:45We live in an atmosphere of shame.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48We're ashamed of everything that's real about us.
0:08:48 > 0:08:51Ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives,
0:08:51 > 0:08:54of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions,
0:08:54 > 0:08:57of our experience, just as we're ashamed of our naked skins.
0:08:57 > 0:09:00The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04Jack Tanner is a sort of self portrait of Shaw,
0:09:04 > 0:09:06so he's possibly one of the most verbose...
0:09:06 > 0:09:09In fact, that's one of the jokes of the play, that he does...
0:09:09 > 0:09:12He comments on his own verbosity, doesn't he?
0:09:12 > 0:09:14The last word of the play is "talking".
0:09:15 > 0:09:18And it's about talking but it's about ideas.
0:09:21 > 0:09:25Shaw's lifelong big idea was that inequality of any kind -
0:09:25 > 0:09:30economic, gender or race - was neither inevitable nor acceptable.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36He wrote that poverty was the greatest of our evils
0:09:36 > 0:09:38and the worst of our crimes.
0:09:39 > 0:09:43And he hated poverty because, like a lot of Dubliners,
0:09:43 > 0:09:45he was born into it.
0:09:53 > 0:09:55So, this was his bedroom.
0:09:57 > 0:09:58Tiny little room.
0:09:58 > 0:10:02It's not hard to imagine him sitting here as a little boy.
0:10:02 > 0:10:07Born into what he called "shabby, genteel poverty."
0:10:12 > 0:10:15His mother was a singer
0:10:15 > 0:10:21and so he would have heard operas and all kinds of musicians play.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24MUSIC: Home Sweet Home by Nellie Melba
0:10:36 > 0:10:39So, this was his parents' room.
0:10:40 > 0:10:43Shaw realised at the age of three
0:10:43 > 0:10:47that his father was an alcoholic
0:10:47 > 0:10:51and his mother, who was a woman who didn't bestow
0:10:51 > 0:10:54any great deal of affection or love on him,
0:10:54 > 0:10:58was involved with a music teacher called George Lee.
0:10:58 > 0:11:03It wasn't just that the mother had supposedly taken this lover
0:11:03 > 0:11:07but she lived with the lover and the husband in this house
0:11:07 > 0:11:12and what a strange thing that must have been for the young boy,
0:11:12 > 0:11:18to watch his father be isolated and diminished in that way.
0:11:18 > 0:11:22Certainly an unorthodox household arrangement.
0:11:27 > 0:11:32You think about the early life of Shaw in Synge Street.
0:11:32 > 0:11:36What must that have been like for him to grow up in a place like this?
0:11:36 > 0:11:40Shaw invented the word "downstart" and I think that's one of the things
0:11:40 > 0:11:42that gave him his human sympathy, you know.
0:11:42 > 0:11:46He was trying to shake people to say, "Look, it is not inevitable
0:11:46 > 0:11:48"that vast numbers of people have to lead lives
0:11:48 > 0:11:51"that are constrained by poverty,
0:11:51 > 0:11:54"by ignorance, by filth, by inequality.
0:11:54 > 0:11:56"We can change it."
0:11:56 > 0:11:59When he was a kid, his nanny would take him out walking
0:11:59 > 0:12:01and they would walk
0:12:01 > 0:12:05and she was probably paid buttons by his mother and father, you know,
0:12:05 > 0:12:08and it seems clear that she used to do some prostitution on the side,
0:12:08 > 0:12:11so he'd be taken into the horror of the Dublin slums.
0:12:11 > 0:12:14He saw this kind of poverty and he was horrified by it.
0:12:14 > 0:12:15That's what haunted him.
0:12:15 > 0:12:18There's a kind of smell of the slums in his nostrils
0:12:18 > 0:12:21and it's what drives him.
0:12:21 > 0:12:25He wants the world to get away from that kind of indignity.
0:12:27 > 0:12:29"I now confess to an episode in my boyhood
0:12:29 > 0:12:33"formerly so repugnant to me that for 80 years
0:12:33 > 0:12:37"I never mentioned it to any mortal creature - not even my wife."
0:12:40 > 0:12:43We're in the centre of Model School in Dublin.
0:12:43 > 0:12:47This is the second school that Shaw attended.
0:12:49 > 0:12:51"I was sent to Marlborough Street
0:12:51 > 0:12:55"and at once became a boy with whom no Protestant young gentleman
0:12:55 > 0:12:57"would speak or play."
0:13:00 > 0:13:05A sole Protestant child in a school of poor Catholic pupils.
0:13:05 > 0:13:07He was unhappy here.
0:13:07 > 0:13:08Very unhappy
0:13:08 > 0:13:11I suppose he felt the shame of being an outsider
0:13:11 > 0:13:15but he also I'm sure felt the shame of being poor.
0:13:16 > 0:13:19And he was ashamed that he was ashamed.
0:13:19 > 0:13:22It further reinforced in him, I think,
0:13:22 > 0:13:25the notion that poverty was a horrible thing
0:13:25 > 0:13:28and later on he came to question, of course,
0:13:28 > 0:13:31why some people were poor and other people were rich,
0:13:31 > 0:13:36which was what led him to his philosophical examination
0:13:36 > 0:13:39of how society is put together.
0:13:41 > 0:13:44His whole idea about education was that it's not the teacher
0:13:44 > 0:13:46who should be doing the questioning,
0:13:46 > 0:13:50it's the child who should be questioning the teacher.
0:13:50 > 0:13:55It should implant in the child a love of learning,
0:13:55 > 0:14:00to develop the ability to think for one's self,
0:14:00 > 0:14:03to think critically, to question everything.
0:14:03 > 0:14:08Authority, religion, precepts, tenets, propaganda.
0:14:15 > 0:14:20Even 100 years ago, Shaw understood that you had to look for the truth,
0:14:20 > 0:14:22not simply accept it.
0:14:22 > 0:14:27Many people today still don't trust the so-called voices of authority
0:14:27 > 0:14:28or the media.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31Shaw was adamant that we had to wake up.
0:14:32 > 0:14:33To be active.
0:14:33 > 0:14:37To question, to be aware of the world around us.
0:14:39 > 0:14:43And awareness is the beginning of action.
0:14:43 > 0:14:46He wasn't just telling you, this is what you must think,
0:14:46 > 0:14:48he was telling you, this is how you must think.
0:14:48 > 0:14:51You have a right but also a duty to think for yourself
0:14:51 > 0:14:53and not to take the orthodoxies, you know,
0:14:53 > 0:14:56but to actually feel that you are free as a human being
0:14:56 > 0:14:58to engage with ideas
0:14:58 > 0:15:01and to be sceptical about things that people are telling you.
0:15:03 > 0:15:07By the age of 20, the one truth Bernard Shaw couldn't escape
0:15:07 > 0:15:10was that Dublin was becoming too small for him.
0:15:13 > 0:15:15Ireland is an island.
0:15:15 > 0:15:18It's an island off the coast of an island.
0:15:18 > 0:15:22There's something about living on an island that gives you a particular
0:15:22 > 0:15:27desire to leave it, to get away from it, because it can be suffocating.
0:15:28 > 0:15:32When I grew up in Ireland in the '50s and early '60s,
0:15:32 > 0:15:36deep inside me there were some instinct try to prove myself
0:15:36 > 0:15:42against something else rather than that staid, predictable, familiar,
0:15:42 > 0:15:45grey society that I felt I was trapped in.
0:15:46 > 0:15:49When Shaw left, he didn't come back 29 years.
0:15:49 > 0:15:54His true ambition was to become a universal artist.
0:15:54 > 0:15:58If your spirit is adventurous, you need something more than that.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02You need to move beyond the comforts of a small town.
0:16:06 > 0:16:08London wasn't much better.
0:16:08 > 0:16:11He left his feckless father behind in Dublin
0:16:11 > 0:16:14and lived with his mother in rented rooms,
0:16:14 > 0:16:17earning a few shillings ghost-writing music reviews
0:16:17 > 0:16:19and failing spectacularly as a novelist.
0:16:20 > 0:16:22In his first decade in London,
0:16:22 > 0:16:26he reckoned he'd earned the sum total of £6.
0:16:26 > 0:16:28But on his 29th birthday,
0:16:28 > 0:16:31wearing a brand-new suit paid for with the insurance money
0:16:31 > 0:16:35from his father's death, George Bernard Shaw lost his virginity
0:16:35 > 0:16:37to his mother's best friend.
0:16:37 > 0:16:40It might sound like a Freudian nightmare
0:16:40 > 0:16:41but it was the making of him.
0:16:41 > 0:16:45The shy boy was replaced by a new, confident persona.
0:16:45 > 0:16:47G.B.S.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51He called it "the most fictitious character I have ever created".
0:16:52 > 0:16:55Don't be deceived, ladies and gentlemen.
0:16:56 > 0:17:00When a man is playing the simple, unaffected human being...
0:17:01 > 0:17:06..in public he's always acting as hard as he possibly can.
0:17:06 > 0:17:11And small blame to him, I do that sort of thing myself.
0:17:11 > 0:17:14He realised that to get his work around, you know,
0:17:14 > 0:17:17he had to create a persona, didn't he?
0:17:17 > 0:17:19He had to invent G.B.S,
0:17:19 > 0:17:22so he became this sort of conscious entertainer
0:17:22 > 0:17:24always with an opinion on every subject
0:17:24 > 0:17:27and I think that was a conscious effort on Shaw's part
0:17:27 > 0:17:29to market his plays.
0:17:30 > 0:17:35By the 1890s, this new, confident G.B.S stopped writing bad novels
0:17:35 > 0:17:38and started to write what he called sermons -
0:17:38 > 0:17:42plays about real social issues learned from his years
0:17:42 > 0:17:45speaking, protesting and pamphleteering on the streets.
0:17:45 > 0:17:49It was radical, but he really believed that serious business
0:17:49 > 0:17:51could be conducted from the stage.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55His first unpleasant plays dealt with the horrors
0:17:55 > 0:17:58of slum landlordism, the social shame of divorce
0:17:58 > 0:18:02and the grim economic realities of prostitution.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06Victorian London was scandalised but he had their attention.
0:18:08 > 0:18:10He was an overtly political writer.
0:18:10 > 0:18:12He knew enough about the London audience
0:18:12 > 0:18:15to know you always had to sugar the pill with jokes
0:18:15 > 0:18:19but it is always an appeal to our intelligence
0:18:19 > 0:18:21and to our emotional maturity
0:18:21 > 0:18:25to see that the world is worth arguing over.
0:18:25 > 0:18:28He is absolutely insistent
0:18:28 > 0:18:33that his audiences share the lives of others and ideas of others.
0:18:33 > 0:18:36What do you want to take down what I said for?
0:18:36 > 0:18:38You'll just show me what you wrote.
0:18:39 > 0:18:42How do I know if you took me down right?
0:18:43 > 0:18:45That ain't proper writing.
0:18:45 > 0:18:47I can't read that.
0:18:47 > 0:18:52He's reacting against a form of theatre which he despised.
0:18:52 > 0:18:56He despised those kind of heart on sleeve Victorian melodramas
0:18:56 > 0:19:00that were the West End staple that he was trying to sweep away.
0:19:00 > 0:19:04He was restoring seriousness to the London theatre.
0:19:04 > 0:19:08But that's the key thing. I think Shaw was a great demolition expert.
0:19:08 > 0:19:11He inherits a medium that when he comes into it into the 1890s
0:19:11 > 0:19:15is ossified, really, and is dealing in certain stock forms.
0:19:15 > 0:19:19Stock melodramas, stock romance, stock love stories,
0:19:19 > 0:19:21bad Shakespeare productions, obviously,
0:19:21 > 0:19:24actor managers dominating the whole theatre.
0:19:24 > 0:19:26Shaw comes along and puts a bomb under it all, really,
0:19:26 > 0:19:30and explodes it and says, no, theatre can actually be serious,
0:19:30 > 0:19:33it can address big issues, it can be topical
0:19:33 > 0:19:35and it can make you think.
0:19:36 > 0:19:40Shaw is always challenging you
0:19:40 > 0:19:43and people don't always like that.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46I think it is good to challenge people.
0:19:47 > 0:19:51Like a Trojan horse, Shaw was prepared not just to challenge
0:19:51 > 0:19:53but to undermine the society he lived in.
0:19:53 > 0:19:57To show his contempt for the British class system.
0:19:57 > 0:20:00Pygmalion, I suppose, is the perfect example,
0:20:00 > 0:20:02where he turns a flower girl into a lady
0:20:02 > 0:20:05just by changing the way she speaks.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08You see this creature with her kerbstone English?
0:20:08 > 0:20:11The English that will keep her in the gutter for the rest her days.
0:20:11 > 0:20:13Well, sir, in three months I could pass her off as a duchess
0:20:13 > 0:20:15- at an ambassador's reception. - No, no, no.
0:20:15 > 0:20:18Yes. I could even get her a job as a lady's maid or a shop assistant,
0:20:18 > 0:20:21- which requires better English. - You mean you could make me...
0:20:21 > 0:20:23Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf,
0:20:23 > 0:20:26you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns,
0:20:26 > 0:20:29you incarnate insult to the English language...
0:20:31 > 0:20:34I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba.
0:20:35 > 0:20:38Here's simultaneously entertaining,
0:20:38 > 0:20:41theatrically appealing and...
0:20:41 > 0:20:44complex, unresolvable, unpindownable.
0:20:44 > 0:20:48I mean, obviously Shaw relishes ideas and a lot of his plays are
0:20:48 > 0:20:51discussion plays, but at the same time, if you look at the plays,
0:20:51 > 0:20:54there's an extraordinary, sort of, emotional undertone
0:20:54 > 0:20:58and the very end of Pygmalion, what happens, Professor Higgins,
0:20:58 > 0:21:01having sort of modelled and created this woman Eliza,
0:21:01 > 0:21:03sees her become independent
0:21:03 > 0:21:06and there's a wonderful, sort of, heartbreak at the end
0:21:06 > 0:21:09when he's both rejoicing in Eliza's independence
0:21:09 > 0:21:13and at the same time realising he's now left alone.
0:21:13 > 0:21:17You know, he's the master who's been overtaken by his pupil.
0:21:17 > 0:21:21You can't take away the knowledge you gave me.
0:21:22 > 0:21:24You said I had a finer ear than you
0:21:24 > 0:21:27and I can be civil and kind to people, which is more than you can.
0:21:27 > 0:21:30Ah-ha, that's done you, Henry Higgins, that 'as.
0:21:30 > 0:21:33Now, I don't give that for your bullying and your big talk.
0:21:33 > 0:21:37I shall advertise in the papers that your duchess is a flower girl
0:21:37 > 0:21:40that you taught, and that she'll teach anyone to be a duchess
0:21:40 > 0:21:43just the same in six months for a thousand guineas.
0:21:45 > 0:21:48Victorian London took to Shaw in a big way.
0:21:48 > 0:21:52Like Oscar Wilde, they enjoyed this Irishman's charming way
0:21:52 > 0:21:54of tearing their world apart.
0:21:54 > 0:22:00So after 40 years, the shy boy from Dublin found notoriety and success.
0:22:00 > 0:22:02And with success came money
0:22:02 > 0:22:04and with money came the financial independence to leave
0:22:04 > 0:22:07his mother's home and to find a wife.
0:22:07 > 0:22:11At the tender age of 42, Shaw married an Irish woman,
0:22:11 > 0:22:13Charlotte Payne-Townshend.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16He once wrote that marriage is popular
0:22:16 > 0:22:19because it combines the maximum of temptation
0:22:19 > 0:22:21with the maximum of opportunity.
0:22:21 > 0:22:25But Charlotte could never tolerate the matter of fact side of marriage
0:22:25 > 0:22:28and it was probably never consummated.
0:22:30 > 0:22:33But they lived contentedly for half a century in Ayot St Lawrence,
0:22:33 > 0:22:35an hour north of London,
0:22:35 > 0:22:39and of course it became known as Shaw's Corner.
0:22:39 > 0:22:43And of course it was Shaw himself who left it to the National Trust.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48This is exactly as Shaw left it.
0:22:50 > 0:22:53It feels like he's just...
0:22:53 > 0:22:55that he's just stepped out.
0:23:06 > 0:23:08Ah!
0:23:10 > 0:23:12The Oscar is a doorstop.
0:23:13 > 0:23:18Academy Award for writing the screenplay of Pygmalion.
0:23:19 > 0:23:24He was asked how he felt about winning the Oscar and he said...
0:23:25 > 0:23:28"Considering the source, it's an insult."
0:23:30 > 0:23:33Of course, he also won the Nobel Prize.
0:23:33 > 0:23:37One of only two people to do that, the other one being Bob Dylan.
0:23:42 > 0:23:46I had always read about Shaw's Corner and I had imagined it...
0:23:47 > 0:23:52..but when you're here, you realise there's a stillness about this place
0:23:52 > 0:23:55that is, erm... really powerful.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59It feels like it's a cocoon...
0:24:00 > 0:24:03..away from the world, though of course the world came to him here.
0:24:12 > 0:24:15I've always found it kind of interesting
0:24:15 > 0:24:19to know where writers write, the rooms that they write it -
0:24:21 > 0:24:22It's, erm...
0:24:24 > 0:24:29It's a wonderful feeling to be in the same...
0:24:29 > 0:24:34in the space as where he wrote some of his greatest work.
0:24:36 > 0:24:40It's not too difficult to imagine him sitting here typing away.
0:24:40 > 0:24:42He didn't like to be disturbed.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45People were always calling to the house to meet him,
0:24:45 > 0:24:48to ask his opinion about everything
0:24:48 > 0:24:54and sometimes they'd ask for money, sometimes he actually had stalkers.
0:24:55 > 0:24:58And this was a place where he couldn't be found
0:24:58 > 0:25:00and he could be distracted.
0:25:01 > 0:25:05There's a unique feature about this little... little hut.
0:25:13 > 0:25:15So it revolved with the sun.
0:25:16 > 0:25:22He moved with the times and moved always towards the light, I think,
0:25:22 > 0:25:24not to make too heavy a metaphor of it.
0:25:27 > 0:25:30Shaw was always a forward-thinking man.
0:25:30 > 0:25:33He said himself that he'd been born 50 years too early,
0:25:33 > 0:25:37as if he were waiting for the 20th century to arrive.
0:25:38 > 0:25:41He called himself the messenger boy for the new age.
0:25:43 > 0:25:46I stand for the future and past,
0:25:46 > 0:25:48for the posterity that has no vote
0:25:48 > 0:25:51and for the tradition that never had any.
0:25:51 > 0:25:53For intellectual integrity,
0:25:53 > 0:25:55for humanity,
0:25:55 > 0:25:59for the rescue of industry from commercialism
0:25:59 > 0:26:01and of science from professionalism,
0:26:01 > 0:26:06for all the things that you desire as sincerely as I...
0:26:07 > 0:26:13..but which in you is held in leash by the power of the press.
0:26:15 > 0:26:19By 1904, Shaw's plays and ideas were making an impact
0:26:19 > 0:26:22on British social and political life.
0:26:22 > 0:26:24He helped found the Labour Party,
0:26:24 > 0:26:28the London School of Economics and the New Statesman magazine.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32He was a socialist and a social media sensation.
0:26:32 > 0:26:35He began a successful residency at the Royal Court Theatre
0:26:35 > 0:26:40on Sloane Square, where he was called the Chelsea Shakespeare.
0:26:40 > 0:26:44Coincidentally, it's where I made my own London acting debut.
0:26:46 > 0:26:51He began his run here by taking the piss out of the English and Irish.
0:26:51 > 0:26:56John Bull's Other Island made Edward VII break his chair with laughter.
0:26:56 > 0:26:59Lloyd George saw it five times and declared
0:26:59 > 0:27:02"the cleverest man in England is an Irish man".
0:27:03 > 0:27:06"Man alive, don't you know that all this 'top of the morning'
0:27:06 > 0:27:09"and 'broth of a boy' and 'more power to your elbow' business
0:27:09 > 0:27:11"is got up in England to fool you?
0:27:11 > 0:27:14"Like the Albert Hall concerts of Irish music,
0:27:14 > 0:27:19"no Irishman ever talks like that in Ireland or ever will."
0:27:19 > 0:27:21Shaw was an interesting case, wasn't he,
0:27:21 > 0:27:24because he lived in England much longer than he lived in Ireland
0:27:24 > 0:27:27without ever relinquishing his sense of Irishness.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30The thing about Shaw, wherever he was, he was an outsider.
0:27:30 > 0:27:32Someone said he had the homelessness of genius
0:27:32 > 0:27:35and I think there's some truth in that, actually.
0:27:37 > 0:27:40The English enjoy an outsider commenting on them.
0:27:40 > 0:27:44The English are more receptive to that, I think, than the Irish are.
0:27:44 > 0:27:48The Irish don't like outsiders commenting on them.
0:27:48 > 0:27:50No, I don't, and certainly we get very...
0:27:50 > 0:27:52- We're a little raw in that department.- Yes.
0:27:52 > 0:27:55Whereas the English have a greater tradition of it.
0:27:55 > 0:27:58Shaw made people laugh and Wilde made people laugh,
0:27:58 > 0:28:00Wogan made people laugh, Dave Allen made people...
0:28:00 > 0:28:02and you make people laugh.
0:28:02 > 0:28:06Is it a thing that you can make a more powerful inroad
0:28:06 > 0:28:08if you do it through humour, or...?
0:28:08 > 0:28:10Well, that was Shaw's take on it always.
0:28:10 > 0:28:13If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh,
0:28:13 > 0:28:14otherwise they'll kill you.
0:28:14 > 0:28:17They want us to take a wry look and look askance
0:28:17 > 0:28:20because it is a comedy stance to be the intelligent alien,
0:28:20 > 0:28:25to be slightly outside of somewhere and holding it up for examination
0:28:25 > 0:28:28but with one eyebrow raised in a, "What I'm saying here
0:28:28 > 0:28:31"isn't too damning, I'm just saying this is unusual."
0:28:32 > 0:28:34Shakespeare had a mulberry tree
0:28:34 > 0:28:37and I'm not going to be outdone by Shakespeare.
0:28:37 > 0:28:39LAUGHTER
0:28:39 > 0:28:41He was, as you can see there,
0:28:41 > 0:28:46he was bearded and suited but in the machinery of the modern world,
0:28:46 > 0:28:49I mean, that is somebody being a celebrity.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52I am in a certain difficulty about it because it's perfectly obvious
0:28:52 > 0:28:55to all of you that it's already planted.
0:28:55 > 0:28:56LAUGHTER
0:28:58 > 0:29:01He's a complete ham, isn't he?
0:29:01 > 0:29:03I mean, he's acting up for the crowd and the cameras
0:29:03 > 0:29:06and he has them in the palm of his hand.
0:29:06 > 0:29:08The comparison I draw there is to Einstein,
0:29:08 > 0:29:11as somebody who became iconic in their field.
0:29:11 > 0:29:15You paid for the Shakespearean forehead, so here it is again.
0:29:15 > 0:29:19You'll notice the arrangement of my hair,
0:29:19 > 0:29:23it takes me 20 minutes every morning to get that up, you know,
0:29:23 > 0:29:26to get it properly arranged for you to admire.
0:29:26 > 0:29:29Another thing that strikes me, his accent.
0:29:29 > 0:29:32Yes, he's still got an Irish accent even though he left the country
0:29:32 > 0:29:34presumably 40, 50 years before then.
0:29:34 > 0:29:38It's Irish but there's an inflection, a slight inflection.
0:29:38 > 0:29:42Now, are we saying that he may have cultivated that accent slightly
0:29:42 > 0:29:47- to distinguish himself in the world he was working in?- I don't know.
0:29:50 > 0:29:53Now, whether you are a foreigner or a native,
0:29:53 > 0:29:56the first thing I must impress on you
0:29:56 > 0:30:01is that there is no such thing as ideally correct English.
0:30:02 > 0:30:06I wish I could offer you your choice among them all as a model
0:30:06 > 0:30:12but for the moment, I am afraid you must put up with me, an Irish man.
0:30:13 > 0:30:18Shaw said, "In Britain, I am still a foreigner and I shall die one."
0:30:18 > 0:30:21But his wife Charlotte had family in Cork and Kerry
0:30:21 > 0:30:24and so, as a 50-year-old man, he was going to have to face
0:30:24 > 0:30:28the inevitable at some point and go home.
0:30:28 > 0:30:31The dilemma that every exile faces is that...
0:30:31 > 0:30:35once you leave the place that you're from,
0:30:35 > 0:30:38you never belong there in quite the same way again
0:30:38 > 0:30:44and the place that you go to, you never truly belong either.
0:30:44 > 0:30:46And that can produce a restlessness.
0:30:46 > 0:30:51Sometimes, what we're imagining is something that's no longer...
0:30:51 > 0:30:53it's no longer the same.
0:30:54 > 0:30:57I think Shaw understood that and it was 30 years before he came back.
0:30:57 > 0:31:00When he did come back, he didn't come back to Dublin
0:31:00 > 0:31:04where he'd been born and brought up, he came back to a place like this,
0:31:04 > 0:31:08which has a kind of a timelessness about it.
0:31:13 > 0:31:16He was a notoriously bad driver...
0:31:17 > 0:31:20..and Mrs Shaw insisted that when they came to Ireland
0:31:20 > 0:31:22they would be driven.
0:31:24 > 0:31:29What a figure he must have presented sitting in the back of...
0:31:29 > 0:31:34this beautiful, modern machine
0:31:34 > 0:31:38coming through the countryside at a time when there were
0:31:38 > 0:31:42almost no cars on the road, with his white beard and his camera.
0:31:42 > 0:31:46It must have been an amazing, amazing sight as it passed,
0:31:46 > 0:31:50and the drama of it coming from a distance
0:31:50 > 0:31:53and then materialising and then disappearing.
0:31:58 > 0:32:02The idea that he was driving around in Ireland in a Rolls-Royce...
0:32:02 > 0:32:06I heard somebody say once that it shows you what a hypocrite he was.
0:32:06 > 0:32:09There he was, spouting about how everybody was equal.
0:32:09 > 0:32:12But it reminds me of a story, apocryphal or not,
0:32:12 > 0:32:16of Lenin coming back from Finland to lead the Russian Revolution
0:32:16 > 0:32:19where somebody says, you're in a first-class carriage
0:32:19 > 0:32:22and you're coming back to lead the Revolution,
0:32:22 > 0:32:23what's up with that?
0:32:23 > 0:32:27And he said, there should only be first-class carriages,
0:32:27 > 0:32:30and I think Shaw would have agreed with him.
0:32:30 > 0:32:33Probably that everybody should have their own Rolls-Royce.
0:32:35 > 0:32:40Like his writing shed, Shaw loved the isolation of County Kerry.
0:32:40 > 0:32:43He finished his plays Major Barbara and Saint Joan
0:32:43 > 0:32:45on various visits here.
0:32:45 > 0:32:48I think he found energy and inspiration from the landscape.
0:32:48 > 0:32:50It stimulated him.
0:32:50 > 0:32:53And when you look at his letters and photos from here,
0:32:53 > 0:32:56you get the feeling that even though this was his native land,
0:32:56 > 0:32:59he was still eager to explore.
0:32:59 > 0:33:01He spent two hours rowing out to the Skellig Islands
0:33:01 > 0:33:03off the Kerry coasts.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06He called it "the most impossible rock in the world".
0:33:06 > 0:33:08"Part of our dream world".
0:33:08 > 0:33:11He had a childlike sense of curiosity and adventure.
0:33:11 > 0:33:13He went up in hot air balloons,
0:33:13 > 0:33:17he flew over the Cape and the Great Wall of China.
0:33:17 > 0:33:20He experimented with cameras, mechanics and naturism.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23He didn't navel gaze, he looked outwards,
0:33:23 > 0:33:25fascinated by everything he saw
0:33:25 > 0:33:28and questioning everything he saw as wrong.
0:33:28 > 0:33:33Shaw wasn't afraid to bring his lifelong crusade against inequality
0:33:33 > 0:33:35back to the city of his birth.
0:33:40 > 0:33:42"Poverty is a crime.
0:33:42 > 0:33:46"A crime not of the poor but of the people who allowed them to be poor.
0:33:46 > 0:33:49"Poverty is a crime of society.
0:33:49 > 0:33:51"A preventable crime."
0:33:54 > 0:33:59There is an extraordinary meeting when he gives a lecture in 1910
0:33:59 > 0:34:04in Dublin on The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland.
0:34:05 > 0:34:09They give him a round of applause when he arrives
0:34:09 > 0:34:12and he said to them straightaway,
0:34:12 > 0:34:19"I might not be able to reciprocate with some applause for yourselves",
0:34:19 > 0:34:23as he's telling them what they might not want to hear.
0:34:23 > 0:34:24And what's he saying,
0:34:24 > 0:34:29"I went to the workhouse today and I saw how you're treating children
0:34:29 > 0:34:32"in the workhouses and I'm telling you now,
0:34:32 > 0:34:33"you're going to burn in hell
0:34:33 > 0:34:35"for the way you're treating these children.
0:34:35 > 0:34:37"And this is not about the Brits.
0:34:37 > 0:34:40"This is in your control. This is your local government.
0:34:40 > 0:34:43"This is what you're doing to Irish children right now."
0:34:43 > 0:34:46When he was a very famous man and everybody wanted to have
0:34:46 > 0:34:48a look at him and claim him a little bit as a Dubliner
0:34:48 > 0:34:51and all the great and the good of Dublin society come to hear him.
0:34:51 > 0:34:54I mean, to stand up in front of an audience
0:34:54 > 0:34:57and to make them afraid of their souls...
0:34:57 > 0:35:00And of course so prescient, it was so prescient.
0:35:00 > 0:35:04He was the person who identified, before we set up the state,
0:35:04 > 0:35:06the way we were treating children
0:35:06 > 0:35:10was going to be the dark undercurrent of our society.
0:35:10 > 0:35:15You know in Pygmalion where he gives Eliza, who's this kind of poor,
0:35:15 > 0:35:19illiterate young woman off the streets, literally,
0:35:19 > 0:35:22and he gives her that great line at end,
0:35:22 > 0:35:24when she's become the sort of mock duchess
0:35:24 > 0:35:27and she says, you know, "We become of the way we're treated."
0:35:28 > 0:35:33The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves,
0:35:33 > 0:35:34but how she's treated.
0:35:35 > 0:35:38I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins
0:35:38 > 0:35:41because he always treats me as a flower girl and always will.
0:35:41 > 0:35:42But I know I can be a lady to you
0:35:42 > 0:35:46because you always treat me as a lady and always will.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49If you treat somebody like dirt, they'll become dirt.
0:35:49 > 0:35:52If you treat them with decency and dignity,
0:35:52 > 0:35:54they will be decent and dignified.
0:35:54 > 0:35:57And I think that's the belief that runs through his politics, you know?
0:35:57 > 0:35:59His politics, in a way, are very, very simple,
0:35:59 > 0:36:01which is just that nobody should be treated like dirt.
0:36:01 > 0:36:05I dare say my mother could find some chap or other who'd do very well.
0:36:06 > 0:36:08We were above that in Covent Garden.
0:36:08 > 0:36:11- What do you mean?- I sold flowers.
0:36:11 > 0:36:12I didn't sell myself.
0:36:13 > 0:36:16Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.
0:36:18 > 0:36:20Mrs Warren's Profession.
0:36:21 > 0:36:25This amazing play, which was revolutionary for its time,
0:36:25 > 0:36:29which is about the notion of prostitution.
0:36:29 > 0:36:33More importantly about the economic demands that make a woman
0:36:33 > 0:36:36turn to prostitution just to educate her daughter.
0:36:36 > 0:36:38Shaw made no moral judgments
0:36:38 > 0:36:41but he was scathing about the harsh realities
0:36:41 > 0:36:44of life for women in Victorian England.
0:36:44 > 0:36:46The play was banned in London
0:36:46 > 0:36:50and in New York the cast were arrested on stage, mid-performance.
0:36:54 > 0:36:56He was a true champion of women
0:36:56 > 0:37:00and believed that women were in every way
0:37:00 > 0:37:03the equal of men and that's something that we may say,
0:37:03 > 0:37:06"Oh, yes, well, that's obvious," but at that time when he was writing,
0:37:06 > 0:37:08it wasn't obvious.
0:37:08 > 0:37:11His play Saint Joan, for example,
0:37:11 > 0:37:14is about a woman who takes on the male establishment,
0:37:14 > 0:37:18questions it and is willing to sacrifice her life
0:37:18 > 0:37:20for her principles and for the truth.
0:37:20 > 0:37:24I think I'm very drawn to Shaw because I think I am, as a director,
0:37:24 > 0:37:29drawn to plays that are full of debate and full of ideas.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32It feels at the moment like we are so polarised in politics
0:37:32 > 0:37:35that we can't understand the other's view.
0:37:35 > 0:37:38Now, that's incredibly painful at a point where you've got Trump
0:37:38 > 0:37:40in America and you've got Brexit here, you know,
0:37:40 > 0:37:42one's natural instinct is not to look at the other perspective.
0:37:42 > 0:37:45You've not many friends at court.
0:37:45 > 0:37:48Why do all these nights and courtiers and churchmen hate me?
0:37:49 > 0:37:51Simpleton.
0:37:51 > 0:37:54Do you expect stupid people to love you for showing them up?
0:37:56 > 0:38:01In terms of the depictions of women in theatre,
0:38:01 > 0:38:04- she's a very strong and powerful character.- Yes.
0:38:04 > 0:38:07It's one of the great roles for women
0:38:07 > 0:38:11because it's so difficult to play and epic and complex.
0:38:11 > 0:38:14What I love about Joan is that she sees herself
0:38:14 > 0:38:18as a soldier and so she's not a woman or a man.
0:38:18 > 0:38:21I really believe that she sees herself in that way
0:38:21 > 0:38:25and that's sort of a post-feminist thing,
0:38:25 > 0:38:28that I hope one day we manage to achieve, where it doesn't
0:38:28 > 0:38:31really matter what sex you are, you can just do something.
0:38:31 > 0:38:36I think he is fascinated by women as the outrageous voice
0:38:36 > 0:38:39and the challenging voice.
0:38:39 > 0:38:42It feels like it's written by a woman for a woman as opposed to
0:38:42 > 0:38:46- a man for a woman.- Yeah, and even I feel it from the audience,
0:38:46 > 0:38:51sometimes they don't like Joan because she's so full of pride
0:38:51 > 0:38:54and conviction and that's not very feminine, is it?
0:38:56 > 0:38:57Light your fires!
0:38:58 > 0:39:02Do you think I dread it as much as the life of a rat in a hole?
0:39:04 > 0:39:06My voices were right.
0:39:06 > 0:39:08- Joan, Joan!- Yes!
0:39:08 > 0:39:10He didn't just put women on the stage in great roles.
0:39:10 > 0:39:12Many of those great roles were supported
0:39:12 > 0:39:14and inspired by women that he knew.
0:39:14 > 0:39:18He was really supportive of women and he supported women
0:39:18 > 0:39:21who otherwise people would see as troublemakers.
0:39:21 > 0:39:24That was what really impressed him about the suffragettes.
0:39:24 > 0:39:27You know, people saying you're completely crazy and he's like,
0:39:27 > 0:39:30"Well, no, they're not crazy. They are actually going to do this
0:39:30 > 0:39:32"and they sound like hooligans."
0:39:32 > 0:39:34What was it Emmeline Pankhurst said?
0:39:34 > 0:39:36"I am what you would call a hooligan."
0:39:36 > 0:39:40But hey, you know, I sit here talking to you
0:39:40 > 0:39:43and I do have the vote and the right to education
0:39:43 > 0:39:48and many of the things that were imagined to the impossible.
0:39:48 > 0:39:50How about you listed Shaw
0:39:50 > 0:39:55as one of the "top ten" feminists of the century?
0:39:55 > 0:39:57Why do you say that?
0:39:57 > 0:39:58Because...
0:39:58 > 0:40:03Because he had enormous influence and he didn't just write journalism,
0:40:03 > 0:40:06he turned up at meetings, he promoted people,
0:40:06 > 0:40:08he went to rallies, he shouted.
0:40:08 > 0:40:12But not only that, but he actually was doing that decades before
0:40:12 > 0:40:16with his friends in the socialist movement, like Eleanor Marx.
0:40:16 > 0:40:19Saying, "If we have socialism on the agenda,
0:40:19 > 0:40:22"if we're looking at equality, then this journey, part of this journey,
0:40:22 > 0:40:24"is also the inequality between people,
0:40:24 > 0:40:29"between humans and between men and women as well."
0:40:29 > 0:40:32- He would have said that women's rights were human rights.- Yeah.
0:40:34 > 0:40:36I think Shaw was a truly brave man,
0:40:36 > 0:40:40always prepared to risk unpopularity or outrage.
0:40:40 > 0:40:44At the beginning of World War I, his closest friends ostracised him.
0:40:44 > 0:40:47One called him "a complete bastard"
0:40:47 > 0:40:50and there were calls for him to be shot as a traitor.
0:40:50 > 0:40:54But Shaw couldn't stay quiet about the propaganda,
0:40:54 > 0:40:59the jingoism, about the greed of the arms trade or the sheer futility of
0:40:59 > 0:41:02war, where the only winner was war itself.
0:41:03 > 0:41:06In 1914,
0:41:06 > 0:41:11I was as sorry for the young Germans who lay slain or mutilated
0:41:11 > 0:41:16in no man's land as for the British lads who lay beside them.
0:41:16 > 0:41:21War is to me a sheer waste of life.
0:41:22 > 0:41:26Sadly, I think Shaw could have written these words yesterday.
0:41:28 > 0:41:32I have visions of streets heaped with mangled corpses
0:41:32 > 0:41:37in which children wander, crying for their parents,
0:41:37 > 0:41:42and babies grasp and strangle in the clutches of dead mothers.
0:41:44 > 0:41:46I dislike war,
0:41:46 > 0:41:50not only for its dangers and inconveniences,
0:41:50 > 0:41:54but because of the loss of so many young men,
0:41:54 > 0:41:59any of whom may be a Newton or an Einstein, a Beethoven,
0:41:59 > 0:42:03a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare or even a Shaw.
0:42:07 > 0:42:10It wasn't easy to be that kind of commentator.
0:42:10 > 0:42:15It required real bravery and courage, don't you think?
0:42:15 > 0:42:16I've no doubt that Shaw
0:42:16 > 0:42:21was exceptionally brave and courageous.
0:42:21 > 0:42:24It would have been easier for him to stay silent
0:42:24 > 0:42:26about a lot of burning issues
0:42:26 > 0:42:29in domestic and international politics
0:42:29 > 0:42:31and controversies at that time.
0:42:31 > 0:42:36Take the First World War - he could have decided that he was going
0:42:36 > 0:42:40to be relatively quiet about that but he explodes about it.
0:42:40 > 0:42:44There are various issues in relation to what's going on in Ireland
0:42:44 > 0:42:46that he could have been relatively quiet about
0:42:46 > 0:42:51but he's not going to stay silent about what he sees as the excesses,
0:42:51 > 0:42:53the mistakes of British rule in Ireland.
0:42:55 > 0:42:59You've got to remember that in the middle of Ireland's struggle
0:42:59 > 0:43:02for independence, which came to a head in the 1916 rising,
0:43:02 > 0:43:07Shaw was one of the few Irish voices that Britain might listen to.
0:43:07 > 0:43:12And so he offered his support to a man on trial in London for his life.
0:43:12 > 0:43:15Sir Roger Casement was a highly respected diplomat
0:43:15 > 0:43:16and knight of the realm
0:43:16 > 0:43:20but also an Irish Republican and a gun-runner.
0:43:20 > 0:43:23Roger Casement was a really interesting character.
0:43:23 > 0:43:25Protestant from the North of Ireland
0:43:25 > 0:43:28who was knighted by the British establishment
0:43:28 > 0:43:31for his work in the Congo.
0:43:31 > 0:43:33Somewhat later, then,
0:43:33 > 0:43:36he was caught importing arms into Ireland
0:43:36 > 0:43:42for the Irish revolution and he went from being an establishment hero
0:43:42 > 0:43:43to being a villain.
0:43:43 > 0:43:47And Shaw came to his defence and for Shaw
0:43:47 > 0:43:51the courtroom was a theatre
0:43:51 > 0:43:56and he wanted Casement to defend himself
0:43:56 > 0:43:59by reciting a defence that
0:43:59 > 0:44:04would be written specifically by Shaw
0:44:04 > 0:44:07as a piece of theatre
0:44:07 > 0:44:13in which he would get the jury to think about why they were trying him
0:44:13 > 0:44:15and to appeal to their sense -
0:44:15 > 0:44:18in a weird way it's a Shavian kind of paradox -
0:44:18 > 0:44:22to appeal to their sense of what was right.
0:44:23 > 0:44:27"If you persist in treating me as an Englishman,
0:44:27 > 0:44:28"you bind yourself thereby
0:44:28 > 0:44:32"to hang me as a traitor before the eyes of the world.
0:44:32 > 0:44:34"Now, as a simple matter of fact
0:44:34 > 0:44:37"I am neither an English man nor a traitor.
0:44:37 > 0:44:41"I am an Irish man captured in a fair attempt to achieve
0:44:41 > 0:44:44"the independence of my country."
0:44:50 > 0:44:56Unfortunately, Casement was talked out of that defence by his counsel
0:44:56 > 0:45:01and as a matter of fact he was found guilty and he was hanged.
0:45:04 > 0:45:05It wasn't just Casement.
0:45:05 > 0:45:11I mean, Shaw, in relation to the Irish revolution in 1916,
0:45:11 > 0:45:16he tried to prevail upon the British government from executing those men
0:45:16 > 0:45:18by saying that if you execute them,
0:45:18 > 0:45:20you'll turn them into martyrs
0:45:20 > 0:45:25and he was also aware of this with Roger Casement because
0:45:25 > 0:45:30Casement did become a martyr and those men of 1916 who were executed
0:45:30 > 0:45:34summarily by the British government also became martyrs
0:45:34 > 0:45:37and he thought that that was a huge mistake.
0:45:37 > 0:45:40But he had a tremendous capacity to see the bigger picture.
0:45:46 > 0:45:52He has developed this way of engaging with the world
0:45:52 > 0:45:55that involves him speaking out, writing.
0:45:55 > 0:45:57It's also feeding his ego.
0:45:57 > 0:46:03There's a reason why Shaw becomes so iconic and part of it is ego.
0:46:03 > 0:46:05I don't think he could help himself.
0:46:05 > 0:46:08There has been one very important omission
0:46:08 > 0:46:10in the proceedings today.
0:46:11 > 0:46:13I simply ask you
0:46:13 > 0:46:16to drink the health
0:46:16 > 0:46:17of Mr Bernard Shaw.
0:46:17 > 0:46:19LAUGHTER
0:46:19 > 0:46:21He is Doctor Frankenstein, you know,
0:46:21 > 0:46:25he creates GBS and it's a very self-conscious,
0:46:25 > 0:46:28thought-through way of projecting himself.
0:46:28 > 0:46:30So now take a good look at me
0:46:30 > 0:46:34because I am the actual, real and original Bernard Shaw.
0:46:34 > 0:46:37- NEWSREEL:- When the Irish dramatist came back to Southampton on the Arandora Star,
0:46:37 > 0:46:40he favoured British news with one of his most meaty interviews.
0:46:40 > 0:46:42Perhaps the vanity of Shaw
0:46:42 > 0:46:45allowed him to square a lot of his own circles.
0:46:46 > 0:46:48As a young campaigner,
0:46:48 > 0:46:51Shaw had been committed to gradual social change.
0:46:51 > 0:46:54But as an old man in his 70s and running out of years,
0:46:54 > 0:46:56he was getting frustrated.
0:46:56 > 0:46:59He felt democratic change was just too slow.
0:46:59 > 0:47:03In the 1930s, he certainly wasn't alone in thinking that a short,
0:47:03 > 0:47:06sharp shock in the form of a Stalin,
0:47:06 > 0:47:10Mussolini or Hitler might save socialism
0:47:10 > 0:47:14and save the world. And when Shaw spoke, the world listened.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19The great majority of the human race are easy-going,
0:47:19 > 0:47:22sensible people and left to themselves,
0:47:22 > 0:47:25they look round for somebody who looks intelligent
0:47:25 > 0:47:27and they say, "Tell us what to do."
0:47:27 > 0:47:30You can't get anything done without a dictatorship.
0:47:30 > 0:47:33I think in justice to Signor Mussolini,
0:47:33 > 0:47:39I ought to tell you that he has a very wonderful head.
0:47:39 > 0:47:42He has a wonderful brow, which comes down to here.
0:47:47 > 0:47:52Then there came a very intelligent gentleman named Adolf Hitler and he,
0:47:52 > 0:47:57knowing perfectly well that the powers would not fight,
0:47:57 > 0:48:00he snapped his fingers at the Treaty of Versailles.
0:48:01 > 0:48:07So far as Hitler and Second World War is concerned,
0:48:07 > 0:48:09he said at the end of the first war,
0:48:09 > 0:48:12"What you are doing is going to create
0:48:12 > 0:48:15"another world war while I'm still alive.
0:48:15 > 0:48:19"To say that they are the enemy of people, of human beings,
0:48:19 > 0:48:24"they will look in and make somebody else the enemy,
0:48:24 > 0:48:26"rather than themselves."
0:48:26 > 0:48:29This is the interesting thing about Shaw's longevity.
0:48:29 > 0:48:34He was there during this period in the 19th century of a nationalism
0:48:34 > 0:48:37that ultimately results in the First World War.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40He has an awful lot to say about international conflict,
0:48:40 > 0:48:46about the dangers of nationalism and patriotism and xenophobia and there,
0:48:46 > 0:48:51in the 1920s and 1930s, he's still there observing the new regimes,
0:48:51 > 0:48:54the new orders, the questioning of democracy.
0:48:54 > 0:48:59The real thing, you cannot get responsibility without dictatorship.
0:48:59 > 0:49:00What you've got to do
0:49:00 > 0:49:02is to make your dictator really responsible so that
0:49:02 > 0:49:07when he abuses his powers or doesn't do the job, you can get rid of him.
0:49:07 > 0:49:09That's... Everything that is done, has to be done,
0:49:09 > 0:49:11somebody's got to dictate it.
0:49:14 > 0:49:16His thinking starts to change
0:49:16 > 0:49:21but that takes him into some kind of dark areas through his support
0:49:21 > 0:49:24of Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin.
0:49:24 > 0:49:28What do you make of that swerve into territory that a lot of people
0:49:28 > 0:49:31found very hard to reconcile with the earlier Shaw?
0:49:31 > 0:49:34He was deeply wrong about Hitler, he was deeply wrong about Mussolini.
0:49:34 > 0:49:37He doesn't have the humility to turn around and say,
0:49:37 > 0:49:38"You know what? I was wrong about that."
0:49:38 > 0:49:41Actually, he shouldn't be spared the opprobrium of it.
0:49:41 > 0:49:44But I think it shouldn't be used to sort of take away everything
0:49:44 > 0:49:46that goes before that, you know?
0:49:46 > 0:49:50In the end, for all the dark parts of him,
0:49:50 > 0:49:54he did more than almost any modern individual
0:49:54 > 0:49:58to try to uphold the ideas that everybody could be dignified
0:49:58 > 0:50:02and that they could be dignified by their mind,
0:50:02 > 0:50:06by having the power to think as independent individuals.
0:50:09 > 0:50:10And what did you come to see?
0:50:13 > 0:50:15An old man...
0:50:15 > 0:50:18who was once a famous playwright.
0:50:22 > 0:50:25Who talked about everything on Earth
0:50:25 > 0:50:26and wrote about it.
0:50:27 > 0:50:31Well, here's what is left of him.
0:50:32 > 0:50:36Not much to look at, is it?
0:50:36 > 0:50:41What drove him to have this need to communicate constantly,
0:50:41 > 0:50:44to be speaking, to be writing, to be commentating?
0:50:50 > 0:50:53When you're around these pages that he touched,
0:50:53 > 0:50:58there's a sense of him being present and at the same time unreachable.
0:51:01 > 0:51:02It kind of leaves you with a sense
0:51:02 > 0:51:04of really wishing you could meet him.
0:51:07 > 0:51:12Now, I wish that the Movietone could bring you
0:51:12 > 0:51:16not only this picture of me
0:51:16 > 0:51:18but I wish it could bring you the fresh air
0:51:18 > 0:51:20that I'm breathing at present.
0:51:25 > 0:51:30I think that all that I can do is to end as I have begun,
0:51:30 > 0:51:33to beat the drum in front of my own booth,
0:51:33 > 0:51:37to ask you to walk up and to see all those old, old,
0:51:37 > 0:51:41old plays of mine that now appear to be so new, new, new.
0:51:48 > 0:51:52His plays and the musical version of Pygmalion, My Fair Lady,
0:51:52 > 0:51:55have been a source of great bounty since his death.
0:51:55 > 0:51:58Three institutions, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts,
0:51:58 > 0:52:02the British Museum and the National Gallery of Ireland,
0:52:02 > 0:52:06all get about £200,000 a year from the royalties he left them.
0:52:08 > 0:52:11It's a wonderful gift to the people of Dublin
0:52:11 > 0:52:14that this bequest continues year after year
0:52:14 > 0:52:17to buy and curate paintings.
0:52:17 > 0:52:22It's a mark of the man. He really believed in accessibility,
0:52:22 > 0:52:26that people should have free access to art because he believed
0:52:26 > 0:52:29in the power of art to change the way people think.
0:52:31 > 0:52:37He also understood that art for many people was an elitist preoccupation,
0:52:37 > 0:52:39that it was only people who were wealthy,
0:52:39 > 0:52:44who had access to this kind of work and he was extremely aware
0:52:44 > 0:52:46that art belonged to everybody.
0:52:50 > 0:52:53How do you think he might have developed had he not left Ireland?
0:52:53 > 0:52:56Do you think it would have hampered him
0:52:56 > 0:52:58or would he have become Shaw anyway?
0:52:58 > 0:53:02Oh, he would have become Shaw anyway because, in a way,
0:53:02 > 0:53:05he needs a nest
0:53:05 > 0:53:09in which to become the cuckoo, you know?
0:53:09 > 0:53:11And he does that with British society.
0:53:11 > 0:53:15I think we probably should have given him greater recognition.
0:53:15 > 0:53:18We here in Ireland owe him a great deal.
0:53:18 > 0:53:21What's he saying to us?
0:53:21 > 0:53:28Well, I think what he would say here is the importance of education.
0:53:28 > 0:53:32The importance of rejecting powerfully the suggestion
0:53:32 > 0:53:35that there are matters over which
0:53:35 > 0:53:39ordinary citizens cannot exercise control.
0:53:39 > 0:53:43Everything in Shaw very much is about the endless capacities
0:53:43 > 0:53:46of people who actually put the work in
0:53:46 > 0:53:49in relation to thinking and sharing and taking
0:53:49 > 0:53:52the vulnerability of the other into account.
0:53:52 > 0:53:56What I would call the necessary grace of discourse.
0:54:01 > 0:54:05When he died, each of the places to which he left his royalties
0:54:05 > 0:54:07were given one additional memento.
0:54:41 > 0:54:44When you think of
0:54:44 > 0:54:48the mind of this man and the influence that he had,
0:54:48 > 0:54:51there's something very touching about it being...
0:54:53 > 0:54:54About being stilled.
0:55:01 > 0:55:02Small ears.
0:55:05 > 0:55:07He wrote about his ears and said, you know,
0:55:07 > 0:55:09that he didn't like his ears so much
0:55:09 > 0:55:11but they're actually quite neat little ears.
0:55:39 > 0:55:40And the way to have a happy life
0:55:40 > 0:55:42is to be too busy doing what you like...
0:55:46 > 0:55:48..all the time.
0:55:48 > 0:55:50Having no time left to you
0:55:50 > 0:55:54to consider whether you're happy or not and...
0:55:55 > 0:55:59Oh, look here, I'm getting talking.
0:55:59 > 0:56:00I must stop.
0:56:12 > 0:56:15Shaw, he wasn't Irish, he wasn't English.
0:56:15 > 0:56:22He was always an outsider to the end of his life and, in the end,
0:56:22 > 0:56:25as a husband, he chose to be buried with his wife.
0:56:25 > 0:56:28Charlotte died five years before he did,
0:56:28 > 0:56:30five or six years before he did,
0:56:30 > 0:56:36and although he had expressed the desire at one stage to be buried
0:56:36 > 0:56:39in St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin,
0:56:39 > 0:56:41he changed his mind and he...
0:56:44 > 0:56:49He was cremated at Golders Green crematorium, like Charlotte was,
0:56:49 > 0:56:52and their ashes were mixed around this hut.
0:56:53 > 0:56:59It's a beautiful... It's a beautiful thing to do at the end of a life.
0:57:01 > 0:57:08My abiding sense of the man is of compassion, humanity and courage.
0:57:08 > 0:57:13A life spent seeking and speaking the truth and damn the consequences.
0:57:15 > 0:57:19As he said, "My life belongs to the community
0:57:19 > 0:57:20"and, as long as I live,
0:57:20 > 0:57:23"it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
0:57:24 > 0:57:27"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die.
0:57:28 > 0:57:30"Life is no brief candle to me.
0:57:30 > 0:57:32"It is a sort of splendid torch
0:57:32 > 0:57:36"and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible
0:57:36 > 0:57:39"before handing it on to the future generations."
0:57:41 > 0:57:44They are making me a signal by which I understand
0:57:44 > 0:57:46that they have had about enough of me.
0:57:46 > 0:57:50I am very reluctant to leave you, ladies and gentlemen, but,
0:57:50 > 0:57:53you see, they can cut me off at any moment.
0:57:53 > 0:57:56To save myself from that humiliation,
0:57:56 > 0:57:59I must bid you good morning.