Shelagh Delaney,
FRSL
The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...
(; 25 November 1938
– 20 November 2011) was an English dramatist and screenwriter. Her debut work, ''
A Taste of Honey'' (1958), has been described by Michael Patterson as "probably the most performed play by a post-war British woman playwright".
[ Also reproduced at ]
Biography
Early life and ''A Taste of Honey'' play
The daughter of an Irish-born bus inspector father, Joseph, and a Salford born mother, Elsie Tremlow,
Delaney was born in 1938 in
Broughton,
Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
,
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
.
Born Sheila Mary Delaney, she later changed her first name to sound more Irish before the premiere of her first play
She failed the
Eleven plus exam
The eleven-plus (11+) is a standardized examination administered to some students in England and Northern Ireland in their last year of primary education, which governs admission to grammar schools and other secondary schools which use academi ...
and attended Broughton Secondary Modern school before transferring at the age of 15 to
Pendleton High School, where she gained five O-levels.
Delaney wrote her first play in ten days, after seeing
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan (10 June 191130 November 1977) was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background.Geoffrey Wan ...
's ''
Variation on a Theme'' (some sources say it was after seeing ''
Waiting for Godot''), at the
Opera House
An opera house is a theatre building used for performances of opera. It usually includes a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and building sets.
While some venues are constructed specifically for o ...
,
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
during its pre–West End tour. Delaney felt she could do better than Rattigan, partly because she felt "''Variation''..." showed "insensitivity in the way Rattigan portrayed homosexuals". Her play ''A Taste of Honey'' was accepted by
Joan Littlewood
Joan Maud Littlewood (6 October 1914 – 20 September 2002) was an English theatre director who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and is best known for her work in developing the Theatre Workshop. She has been called "The Mother of M ...
's
Theatre Workshop Theatre Workshop is a theatre group whose long-serving director was Joan Littlewood. Many actors of the 1950s and 1960s received their training and first exposure with the company, many of its productions were transferred to theatres in the West En ...
. "Quite apart from its meaty content, we believe we have found a real dramatist", Gerry Raffles of Theatre Workshop said at the time.
In the production's programme Delaney was described as "the antithesis of London's 'angry young men'. She knows what she is angry about."
''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