Shelagh Delaney - Wonderful Woman No. 140

Shelagh Delaney - 1938-2011
British Playwright and Screen Writer

Added to the album by Esme, A Wonderful Woman

She wrote 'A Taste Of Honey' when she was only 18... amazing play, amazing woman.
Esme

When I was still in high school, I was among a group of avid theatre-goers who, on at least a monthly basis would, go with our drama teachers to various theatres in and around Manchester. One of these trips was to see A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney at The Octagon Theatre in Bolton. Though that evening is something in the region of twenty years ago, I still remember the performance vividly. It was unlike a lot of the productions we went to see, for a start it was set in Salford, very close to where we went to school and the characters were so realistic to us, well, because they were just like the people all around us. I don't remember if I identified that the female roles were so strong at the time but I do remember thinking one day, when I became an actress I'd love to play Jo (sadly, this was one ambition that I never did fulfil).

Shelagh came from humble beginings, born and raised in Salford in the north of England. She wrote her most famous work, A Taste of Honey, while just 18, it opened in London at the Theatre Royal East in 1958 and was an instant success.

A Taste of Honey showed working-class women from a working-class woman's point of view, had a gay man as a central and sympathetic figure, and a black character who was neither idealised nor a racial stereotype.
Dennis Barker, The Guardian

The play was turned into a film in 1961. The film was also a great success winning four Bafta awards, including best British screenplay and best British film.

Shelagh wrote a number of other plays after A Taste of Honey, though none matched it's success. In 1963, she published a book of short stories, Sweetly Sings the Donkey. Over time, she began to write more for radio and television than for theatre. She was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985.

Her style of writing continued, throughout her career, to be filled with harsh realism, social protest and strong female characters. She has been, and remains to be, an enormous influence on other creatives, her champions include Morrissey of The Smiths who says many of his lyrics would not exist were it not for Shelagh. Jeanette Winterson - Wonderful Woman 98, also remarks on her influence, saying Shelagh was "the first working-class woman playwright".

It may not seem so unusual now, a female writer having huge success at an early age but at the time A Taste of Honey was released, this could only be described as groundbreaking. In some way, Shelagh's success knocked down some of the boundaries faced by women of the lower-classes of the time, opened up the idea that theatre, literature and even, more generally speaking, education were things that could be accessible to all - for these reasons she well-deserves her Wonderful Woman title.

Women never have young minds. They were born three thousand years old.
Shelagh Delaney