George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Blickling Hall is a Jacobean stately home situated in 5,000 acres of parkland in a loop of the River Bure, near the village of Blickling north of Aylsham in Norfolk, England. The mansion was built on the ruins of a Tudor building for Sir Henry Hobart from 1616 and designed by Robert Lyminge. The library at Blickling Hall contains one of the most historically significant collections of manuscripts and books in England, containing an estimated 13,000 to 14,000 volumes. The core collection was formed by Sir Richard Ellys. The property passed into the care of the National Trust in 1940.
Stephen Winsten (1893–1991) was the name adopted by Samuel Weinstein, one of the 'Whitechapel Boys' group of young Jewish men and future writers in London's East End in the years before World War I. In the First World War he was a conscientious objector, and imprisoned in Bedford and Reading gaols. He is now known for his works about George Bernard Shaw, and his life of Henry Salt.
Clara Birnberg was a British artist, illustrator, portraitist and sculptor. After her marriage to the artist Stephen Weinstein, they changed their surname to Winsten and both became Quaker humanists.
Ayot St Lawrence is a small English village and civil parish in Hertfordshire, two miles west of Welwyn. There are several other Ayots in the area, including Ayot Green and Ayot St Peter, where the census population of Ayot St Lawrence was included in 2011.
Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield was a prolific British architect, garden designer and author of the Victorian and Edwardian period.
Killerton is an 18th-century house in Broadclyst, Exeter, Devon, England, which, with its hillside garden and estate, has been owned by the National Trust since 1944 and is open to the public. The National Trust displays the house as a comfortable home. On display in the house is a collection of 18th- to 20th-century costumes, originally known as the Paulise de Bush collection, shown in period rooms.
Langleybury is a country house and estate in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, England, about 3 miles (5 km) northwest of the centre of the town of Watford. The house stands on a low hill above the valley of the River Gade.
Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend was an Irish political activist in Britain. She was a member of the Fabian Society and was dedicated to the struggle for women's rights. She married the playwright George Bernard Shaw.
The Cloisters in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire in the UK was built in 1905 as an open-air school dedicated to Psychology and where students were taught skills from the Arts and Crafts movement. After a period of neglect during World War II The Cloisters became the North Hertfordshire Masonic Centre in 1951.
Shakes versus Shav (1949) is a puppet play written by George Bernard Shaw. It was Shaw's last completed dramatic work. The play runs for 10 minutes in performance and comprises a comic argument between Shaw and Shakespeare, with the two playwrights bickering about who is the better writer as a form of intellectual equivalent of Punch and Judy.
Scott's Grotto in Ware, Hertfordshire, is a Grade I listed building and with six chambers the most extensive shell grotto in the United Kingdom. "It is, although on a small scale, far more complex than Alexander Pope's at Twickenham. Compared with the grotto at Stourhead, on the other hand, it is minute, but that only enhances the enchantment." The surrounding gardens and structures are Grade II* listed.
Cheshunt Great House was a manor house in the town of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, England, near to Waltham Abbey. It is said to have been built by Henry VIII of England for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. The family seat of the Shaw family for over a century, by the late 19th century it was used as a Freemasons Hall and was later used during World War II. After the war, the hall was too costly to run and was opened to the public until a fire gutted it in 1965. It was made a Grade II listed building on 11 June 1954.
Digswell House is a Grade II listed Mansion in Hertfordshire, erected c. 1805–07 by Samuel Wyatt for the Honourable Edward Spencer Cowper, who lived there for some years. It was built in the parish of Digswell from which it takes its name, but was transferred to Welwyn Garden City in 1921. The house is now in the Knightsfield area of Welwyn Garden City. The current house was erected a little eastward of the site on which its predecessor had stood and was built as a commodious country gentleman's home, in an architectural style that can best be described as neoclassical. A portico, with four massive Ionic columns, on the south front is its most impressive external feature.
Ayot may refer to several things in Hertfordshire, England:
Village Wooing, A Comedietta for Two Voices is a play by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1933 and first performed in 1934. It has only two characters, hence the subtitle "a comedietta for two voices". The first scene takes place aboard a liner, the second in a village shop. The characters are known only as "A" and "Z".
Waldo Sullivan Lanchester was a British puppeteer who founded the Lanchester Marionettes (1935–1962), a puppet theatre that was based in Malvern, and later in Stratford-upon-Avon. He wrote a book on the revival of puppeteering and commissioned George Bernard Shaw to write his last completed play Shakes versus Shav in 1949. In 1952, Donald W. Seager wrote that "Waldo Lanchester has consistently been associated with all that is best in the puppet theatre." Archibald Henderson called him "England's greatest puppetmaster."
Old St Lawrence Church is a ruined building in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England. It is protected as a Grade II* listed building, and dates back to the 12th century.
St Lawrence Church is an eighteenth-century, neoclassical church in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England. It is also known as New St Lawrence Church to distinguish it from the ruined Old St Lawrence Church.
Ayot Park is a grade II listed park and garden at Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire, England. It contains the grade II* listed Ayot House along with an earlier manor house and a walled kitchen garden which are also listed.
