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Shelagh Delaney FRSL (; 25 November 1938 – 20 November 2011) Writer Shelagh Delaney dies at 72, thenewstribune.com, 21 November 2011; accessed 10 June 2014. was an English dramatist, screenwriter and author. Her debut work, A Taste of Honey (1958), has been described as "probably the most performed play by a post-war British woman playwright". Also reproduced at It was adapted for the screen and won the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay in 1962. She also wrote the BBC series The House That Jack Built (1977), radio plays and a collection of short stories. Delaney was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985.
A Taste of Honey, first performed on 27 May 1958, is set in her native Salford. "I had strong ideas about what I wanted to see in the theatre. We used to object to plays where the factory workers came cap in hand and call the boss 'sir'. Usually North Country people are shown as gormless, whereas in actual fact, they are very alive and cynical."Shelagh Delaney interview, 2 February 1959, Mid Century Drama, London, Faber, 1960, p. 169 as quoted in Pia Conti's "Shelagh Delaney", in Claude Lichtenstein & Thomas Schregenberger As found: the discovery of the ordinary, Springer, 2001, p. 266
Reuniting the original cast, the play enjoyed a run of 368 performances in the West End from January 1959; it was also performed on Broadway, with Joan Plowright as Jo and Angela Lansbury as her mother in the original cast. It has been described by Michael Patterson in The Oxford Dictionary of Plays as "probably the most performed play by a post-war British woman playwright".
A Taste of Honey was adapted into a film of the same title, released in 1961 with Delaney as an extra in the opening netball scene. Delaney wrote the screenplay with the director, Tony Richardson. According to critics, the film script "contrives to keep in Delaney's best lines while creating a cinematic rather than a theatrical experience". It won the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award in 1962. Delaney's other screenplays include The White Bus, Charlie Bubbles (both 1967) and Dance with a Stranger (1985).Harding, John. Sweetly Sings Delaney. Greenwich Exchange 2014. www.greenex.co.uk She also wrote the BBC series "The House That Jack Built" (1977), which she later adapted as an Off-Off-Broadway play in 1979. In 1985 Delaney was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Delaney wrote several radio plays, including Tell Me a Film (2003), Country Life (2004) and its sequel Whoopi Goldberg's Country Life, which was broadcast in The Afternoon Play slot on BBC Radio 4 in June 2010.
In 1986, the Smiths' lead singer and lyricist Morrissey said: "I've never made any secret of the fact that at least 50 per cent of my reason for writing can be blamed on Shelagh Delaney". The lyrics of "This Night Has Opened My Eyes" are a retelling of the plot of A Taste of Honey, using many direct quotations from the play. Morrissey chose a photo of Delaney as the artwork on the album cover for the Smiths' 1987 compilation album Louder Than Bombs as well as the single "Girlfriend in a Coma".
The first full-length study of her life and work was written by John Harding in 2014, entitled Sweetly Sings Delaney.Harding, John. Sweetly Sings Delaney. Greenwich Exchange 2014. www.greenex.co.uk Tastes of Honey, a biography of Delaney by Selina Todd, was published in 2019.
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