Shaw in the family album

Among the picnics and the visits, the family album keeps one page that stops you. A tall old man stands on a garden path with his hands in his pockets: white beard, knickerbocker tweeds, a flat cap, wicker chairs and cushions scattered on the lawn behind him, a second man leaning in at his elbow. There is nothing written on the back.

If the figure seems familiar, that is because we believe he is George Bernard Shaw.

The explanation is not as wild as it sounds, and it is a matter of geography. In 1898 Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, and Charlotte was a West Cork woman: born and raised at Derry House, Rosscarbery, and the Shaws came back to stay in the summers of the early 1900s. Rosscarbery sits in the very middle of this album's world. Castle Freke is next door; the Drombeg stones are over the hill; the most famous playwright alive was, for weeks at a time, a neighbour.

And Charlotte's people were Townshends, the same West Cork family that runs through this family's own story, from Colonel Richard Townsend in the tree to the Townsend quarter on the arms on the family book's cover. The Joneses moved in that orbit; the Castle Freke pages of the same album say as much. A garden party somewhere in that circle, someone with the family camera, and a tall guest too recognisable to need a caption.

Is it certainly him? Nothing on the back says so. But the beard, the cap, the tweeds and the geography all vote together, and family albums do not usually collect strangers. If you know the gardens of Derry House, or Shaw's West Cork summers, or the face of the man at his elbow, I would be delighted to hear from you.