People known to Bernard Shaw had every reason to fear becoming recognisable characters in his plays. He turned Beatrice Webb into a witchlike virago in The Millionairess, Winston Churchill into an aspiring, blowhard politician in John Bull's Other Island, and Lawrence of Arabia into the eccentric army private Napoleon Alexander Trotsky Meek in Too True to Be Good. However, as eminent Shaw scholar Stanley Weintraub reveals in this exquisite collection, Shaw's relationships to real or imagined personalities could be both curiously unexpected and deliciously complex.

Featuring figures as varied as Julius Caesar, Zulu king Cetewayo, Noel Coward, Edward Elgar, and Benjamin Disraeli, this volume brilliantly demonstrates how Shaw put something of himself into all of his people. The result is a book that is consistently revealing, intriguing, and entertaining.