SHAW AMONG THE SAINTS

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1660, 8 September 1925, Page 3

SHAW AMONG THE SAINTS

(Mr George Bernard Shaw appears among the Saints portrayed in a staned glass window at the Ethical .Church, Queen’s Road, Bayswater (says the London Daily 'Chronicle). The subject is St. Joan, and along with Mr Shaw is another modern personage and champion of Joan of Arc, Anatole France. Her life is symbolised with an understanding suggested by that masterpiece, Mr Shaw’s play of St. Joan, and by Anatole France’s historical work dealing with the wonderful Maid of Orleans. Immortalised in the glass also is the humble British soldier who, touched by Joan’s fervent cry for a cross, quickly seized two pieces of stick, bound them together, and handed them to her.

“ Yes.,” said Mr H. Liddell Armitage, the designer, discussing the work, “ the two men who re-discovered Joan of Arc for this generation are both portrayed in the window. I was asked particularly to put Mr Shaw into it. When all is said and done, his play of Joan is the greatest play since Shakespeare, and in portraying her in a window of this kind it would hardly be fair to leave out the very person who has interpreted for us her true character. I did not personally approach Mr Shaw for his permission to repreesnt him in the window. This was done by Dr Stanton Coit, vicar of the church, who is his personal friend. I do not know whether he has yet seen my work. He had not done so up to the time it left my studio, so I cannot tell you what he thinks of it.”