Private Shaw and Public Shaw

In 1922, it would have been hard to find two more celebrated men in England than George Bernard Shaw and - as he was then still known, thanks to a melodramatic travelogue by Lowell Thomas - “Lawrence of Arabia.” The first, of course, was the world’s most successful playwright, pamphleteer and self-publicist. The second had, overnight, become a national hero and already joined Rhodes, Wellington, and Clive of India in the mythology of the British Empire.
Shaw was 66, Lawrence was 34, and it was a fallow year for both. Having worn himself out on Back to Methuselah, Shaw felt he was finished as a playwright. Lawrence, after a stint in the Colonial office, had written Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and was about to change his name - first to Ross and then to Shaw - and try, unsuccessfully, to become an anonymous Royal Air Force private. Then one casual afternoon in March, they met; and for the next thirteen years, until Lawrence’s death in 1935, they maintained (with Mrs. Shaw as a third partner) one of the most unusual friendships in literary history.