George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 - 2 November 1950) was a world-famous Irish playwright. Born in Dublin, he moved to London at the age of twenty and lived in England for the remainder of his life. Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, but he had a bent for drama: during his career he authored more than sixty plays. Nearly all of his writings dealt sternly with prevailing social problems, but are nicely leavened by a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. He pondered education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege and found them all defective, but his ire was most aroused by the exploitation of the working class by heartless employers; his writings seldom fail to censure that abuse.

An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society and he became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal political rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthful lifestyles.

Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They made their home in Ayot St. Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner. Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling from a ladder. He is the only person to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). These, repectively, were for his contributions to literature, and for his work on the film Pygmalion.