evidence: Shaw makes the childhood poverty and struggle against prejudice endured by his Irish characters seem like an advantage in life Those who know Shaw by reputation as a writer of English society plays may be surprised to learn that he regarded himself as so thoroughly Irish, even after living in London and Hertfordshire for decades. While one might expect to see evidence of Shaw’s Irishness in his three plays set in Ireland – John Bull’s Other Island, O’Flaherty, V.C., and Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman – my book, Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook (published by Palgrave Macmillan and now available in paperback), demonstrates that Shaw’s Irishness is also manifest in his plays set outside of his native country. In this study, I analyse Shaw’s use of Irish and Irish Diasporic characters, as well as what I call "Surrogate Irish" and "Stage English" characters, to prove the veracity of critic RF Dietrich’s recent contention that Shaw "wrote always as an Irishman". [...] In Daniel Corkery's notorious 1931 study, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature, he claimed that Shaw was one of the Irish Protestant writers "for whom Ireland was never a patria in any sense". My book demonstrates just how preposterous (and, indeed, sectarian) such a statement is. Shaw maintained a strongly Irish outlook throughout his life, and it inspired or significantly informed most of his best work – and, of course, Shaw's masterpieces are among the greatest dramatic works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.