Morrissey inspiration Shelagh Delaney dies

Born in 1939 in Salford, Lancashire, Delaney was only 20 when A Taste of Honey was given its stage premiere by Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. In fact, she had written the play two years earlier.

Delaney’s first play addresses several subjects which were taboo in late 1950s Britain. It centres around Jo, a young girl who becomes pregnant by a black sailor. She goes on to befriend and move in with Geoffrey, a gay man. Jo’s mother, meanwhile, elopes with Peter, her rich lover.

Every word meant something. She was extraordinarily accurate about characters. Jane Villiers, Shelagh Delaney’s agent

The play was turned into a film in 1961, earning Baftas for Delaney and for director Tony Richardson. A Taste of Honey is one of the first in the new wave of “kitchen sink drama” movies which emerged from the UK. Other notable films in the genre include The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, A Kind of Loving, and Billy Liar.

A Taste of Honey also signalled the emergence of a new, original and female voice in British theatre. Describing her unique qualities as a writer, Jane Villiers, Shelagh Delaney’s agent for the last 15 years, told Channel 4 News: “No word was wasted. Every word meant something. She understood the characters she wrote about.”

Twenty-four years after A Taste of Honey, Delaney wrote the screenplay for Dance with a Stranger, about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, which starred Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett.

Louder Than Bombs

During her lifetime Shelagh Delaney was championed by several eminent supporters, notably Morrissey and Jeanette Winterson. Morrissey’s songs and sleeve designs teem with references to her work.

In a 1986 interview with NME, the singer, then with The Smiths, 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.” Delaney’s own image is used in the artwork for the Smiths’ Louder Than Bombs album.

Shelagh was unprepared for the huge success of A Taste of Honey. Jane Villiers

Last year author Jeanette Winterson wrote an article for The Guardian, entitled My hero: Shelagh Delaney. In it, she calls her “the first working-class woman playwright” and maintains that, because of her gender, her talent was allowed to fade after the brilliant flash of A Taste of Honey.

It is an argument endorsed by Jane Villiers. “I would agree that female playwrights weren’t nurtured enough or given enough real support during the period when she found fame – whereas they very much are now.”

But in Jane Villiers’ view, any artist, male or female, would have found it difficult to maintain the spectacular success of Delaney’s first work. “The sixties were an extraordinary period that it’s hard to replicate. I think Shelagh was unprepared for the huge success of A Taste of Honey at a very young age.

“She continued to be successful, but because Honey was so huge, it was perhaps the case that she never eclipsed that moment.”