Collected Letters: 1926-50 v. 4

The letters from 1926-1950 complete the four-volume edition of Shaw's correspondence. The book covers the final quarter-century of the dramatist's life, a period in which Shaw had reached the pinnacle of success: a world-renowned Nobel Prize laureate, received with adulation by enthusiastic crowds as he travels the world. The volume contains nearly 750 letters, two-thirds of which are published for the first time, to 350 correspondents, famous and obscure. The letters include one to Mrs Thomas Hardy on her husband's Abbey funeral, one to the Dean of Westminster on homosexuality and a letter to his wife from Moscow on the Communist experiment. He endorses artificial insemination, berates Hollywood films, declines the Order of Merit and secretly attempts to revise the National Anthem. More controversially, he deals with such pressing issues as Italian Fascisti, Spanish Civil War air bombardments, Hitler's treatment of Jews and the strategies of the Allies in the Second World War. The book ends with Shaw clinging to his sanity and his craft in country isolation after the death of his wife, beset by squabbling parasites.