Ashes to Ashes: The Politics of Shaw’s Death

Shaw died on 2 November 1950. Four days later he was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, and on 23 November 1950 his ashes were mixed with those of his wife Charlotte (whose ashes had been stored at Golders Green since her own cremation there seven years earlier) and scattered in the garden of their home in Ayot St Lawrence. On the face of it, all these arrangement went smoothly and were fully in accord with Shaw’s (and Charlotte’s) wishes. Behind the scenes, however, prompted by Nancy Astor and aided by some wiggle room in Shaw’s will, there was a great deal of activity and consternation in the highest political and religious offices in Great Britain about the disposition of the Shaws’ ashes. Previously unexamined documents in the National Archives reveal that Shaw came within a whisker of being buried (with or without Charlotte) in Westminster Abbey or St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.