Bernard Shaw's other island

The decision of the Corporation of Dublin in 1946 to offer Mr Bernard Shaw the Honorary Freedom of the City was not arrived at unanimously. One councillor declared Shaw to be not a fit mentor for either the youth or the adults of Ireland. Another complained that all he could find that Shaw had done for Ireland was to send ‘an occasional long-distance wisecrack’.[1] Other compatriots of Shaw were more generous in their recognition of his achievement and more discerning in their understanding of his relations with Ireland. But even today there are those who, like the councillor in 1946, think of Shaw as having almost completely cast off his connections with Ireland, and even find themselves able to describe him as ‘not very Irish’.[2] He is often omitted from critical books on Anglo-Irish literature, a fate he does not deserve, despite the fact that he was wont to deny the existence of the species Anglo-Irish.