Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.


George Bernard Shaw

You’ve just reminded me of something Swannie… I remember when I was at school, the English lit teacher use to shorten his name to GBS... 'What do you think GBS was trying to say here?...'

It used to wind me up so much - I ended up hating his works (probably by association) and we used to refer to him as GBS - Great Boring Socialist... (Oh... So funny... )

Only after I left school did I realise that he was in fact - a genius… and it made me wonder about the reports on reading currently in the news... Could it be the ‘uncool’ teachers putting the kids off reading – for fear of turning out like them!?

I still shudder when I think of one of my teachers doing the "Come to my woman's breasts" speech by Lady M.

Stuff like that can damage.

It was a male teacher.

These sorts of associations raise harrowing issues for parents. Should I absolutely forbid Shakespeare? Should I profess disdain for Stoppard and Kushner? Should I just sit around all day playing computer games with my son so when he hits adolescence and rebels, he peruses Aristotle's Poetics and goes to live theatre?

Parenthood

Listen to all ideas and opinions, but always go with your own decent instinct. The ONLY thing that really matters anyway, is that you love him... and make sure he knows that you do.

If he turns out anything like my son, you'll be the proudest parent in the whole world x

George Bernard Shaw.

Two facts.
1) Trivial Pursuit question; he's the only one to have won both an Oscar (1938, Best Screenplay for "Pygmalion") and a Nobel Prize (for Literature(1925).

2) He worked in a shed in his garden and which he named "London". If unwelcome visitors arrived, his servants good honestly say: "I'm sorry, Mr Shaw is in "London" at the moment."