15 Famous Names Who Turned Down British Honours

Celebrated playwright George Bernard Shaw, whose most famous works include Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, declined the appointment to the Order of Merit in 1946, arguing the term ‘merit’ could only be fully determined posthumously and with the passage of time. By all accounts, Shaw had only accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature back in 1925 upon his wife’s insistence, after she persuaded him to see it as a way of honouring his native Ireland.