15. George Bernard Shaw won the Nobel Prize for Literature at a time in his life when he was speaking out in favour of Mussolini and even Stalin.
The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw is famously just one of two men to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar (the other being Bob Dylan, of course). During the first half of the 20th century, his works won him popular and critical acclaim not only in his native land but, more significantly, in Britain and the United States. However, to some, Shaw’s legacy will be forever marred by his flirtation fascism. While before and during the First World War, he advocated democratic socialism, he became a fan of authoritarianism from the 1920s onward.
As well as being an open supporter of Mussolini and his Fascist regime in Italy, Shaw also broke with his contemporaries on the left and fully endorsed Stalin. He had been a member of the progressive Fabian Society, but became convinced a more decisive approach was needed. Famously, he described Mussolini as “the right kind of tyrant” and, after meeting with Stalin in person, called the tyrant “a Georgian gentleman with no malice in him”. What’s more, he also spoke openly of his admiration of Hitler (“a very remarkable man”). It was only in the 1940s, when Shaw was in his 80s, that he renounced his admiration for such tyrants.