A Short History of The Shaw Society
The Shaw Society (as opposed to its younger sibling the International Shaw Society, based in the US) was founded by Dr Fritz Loewenstein, a Jewish refugee from Germany in the 1930s. He had a PhD degree from the University of Würzburg with a dissertation on Japanese prints. Indeed, it seems that some of Loewenstein’s choices in prints made their way to the Shaws’ home in Ayot St Lawrence, where they can still be seen on the main staircase. He had approached Shaw in 1936 offering to compile a bibliography: GBS was typically offhand in his response. In 1941, however, Loewenstein finally wore down Shaw’s opposition to his plan for a society to promote Shavian ideas. Interestingly, he did not consider himself a typical Shavian and indeed suggested that new readers should challenge the ideas they met in Shaw’s work. Of himself, he said that despite his lifestyle differences “Yet I consider myself a Shavian. And I proclaim my belief that there is enough atomic energy in Shaw's works to turn this world right-side up, if it is properly applied” (Shavian Volume 7). He called the inaugural meeting, putting back the official date of its foundation to Shaw’s 85th birthday, 26 July 1941.
​
An early member of the Society, Eric Batson, who was both able and energetic, gradually took over its administrative work from Loewenstein, becoming first the London Secretary, then General Secretary; he also edited the Shaw Society Bulletin, which he later re-named The Shavian.
​
In October 1950 Batson was largely responsible for the Society’s staging of the premiere of Shaw’s play Farfetched Fables (written in 1948) directed by a favourite actress of Shaw’s, Ellen Pollock, who later became President of the Society. It filled a club theatre in central London for thirty performances from 6 September 1950, closing three weeks before Shaw’s death. It naturally attracted wide press coverage but one theatre critic complained that Shaw (at the time 92) introduced no new ideas in it!
​
In 1955 the Society of Authors, as Shaw’s literary executor, did a lucrative deal with the entrepreneurs of My Fair Lady, a musical loosely based on Shaw’s Pygmalion. As a result of commercial protection of the lucrative musical Shaw’s original play, Pygmalion, was rarely performed in larger venues anywhere in the world for the next two decades. Eric Batson used his PR skills to campaign vigorously against this outrage, and a national newspaper dubbed the Shaw Society “the fighting 300”. It was not until 1973 that a major production of Pygmalion returned to the West End with Michael Blakemore’s production starring Diana Rigg as Eliza, Alec McCowen as Higgins and Michael Hordern as Doolittle.
In 1957 Shaw’s will was contested in the Chancery Court to establish the legal standing of Shaw’s alphabet bequest. Details of this very considerable project can be found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet. Barbara Smoker, who later became Secretary of the Shaw Society, briefed the barrister representing the Attorney General on behalf of the bequest but they lost the case. Funded by Shaw’s friend I J Pitman (later Sir James Pitman), the Society then lodged an official appeal against the judicial decision, but Pitman accepted an out of court settlement of £8,300.
By this time, in addition to the Society’s monthly meetings in central London, which continue to this day as playreadings and his own “lecture recitals” on a widespread circuit, Batson launched annual open-air performances by the Society at Shaw’s Corner on the Sunday nearest to Shaw’s birthday. At first this was merely an amateur reading with a very small audience, but it gradually expanded over the years to full professional productions. For some years, the National Trust took over this task with the director Michael Friend at the helm, but this was interrupted by the Covid epidemic. In 2024 the Birthday Play returned to Shaw’s Corner with ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ performed by Shaw2020​, a theatre company set up to specialise in performing the work of Shaw.
Barbara Smoker, a well known humanist and President of the National Secular Society, amongst others became Batson’s assistant and the Shaw Society’s General Secretary; with a few short breaks, she remained the Society’s secretary for the next 35 years. She also edited The Shavian from 1958 to 1964, when she handed over the editorship to T F Evans, who finally retired in 2005. He was then succeeded by Ivan Wise, a young Shavian scholar, followed by Dr Anne Wright, an eminent Shavian Scholar herself and former Chair of the Society. Ivan Wise returned as editor in 2023.
Presidents of the Society have included famous actors Esmé Percy, Ellen Pollock (who regularly introduced the performances of Shaw’s plays in the garden at Ayot St Lawrence in the 1990s) Barry Morse and current Honorary President, the Shaw biographer, Sir Michael Holroyd. Vice presidents currently include actors Dame Judy Dench, Patricia Hodge, Dame Siân Philips, and Barry Morse’s son Hayward Morse.