Back to home page - News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270

Tastes of Honey: The Making of Shelagh Delaney and a Cultural Revolution

by Selina Todd - £9.99  Vintage Publishing (2021)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781784703486 | ISBN 10: 1784703486

The ground-breaking, firebrand playwright who changed our cultural and social landscape and put working-class lives centre stage.
 
On 27 May 1958, A Taste of Honey opened in a small fringe theatre in London. Written by a nineteen-year-old bus driver’s daughter from Salford, the play would blow Britain open and expose a deeply polarised society. It would also make its young author a star.
 
As Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was telling people they had ‘never had it so good’, A Taste of Honey illuminated the lives of the millions left to languish in Britain’s slums. Delaney’s strong female characters – teenager Jo and her single mother, Helen – asserted that working-class women wanted more than suburban housewifery. The play provoked a barrage of press and political criticism, but was embraced by those whose lives had now been placed centre stage.
 
This is the story of how a working-class teenager stormed theatreland, and what happened next. Shelagh Delaney’s life and work reveal why women of her generation were provoked to challenge the world they’d grown up in. Exploding old certainties about class, sex and taste, Delaney blazed a new path – redefining what art could be and inspiring a new generation of writers, musicians and artists.

(Price & availability last checked: November 2021)

This website can't tell you if we have this book in the shop or not - to ask, phone us or use the enquiry link below. (We can order most books within 7-10 days, subject to availability.)
  

Featured book: Recommended Non-Fiction titles for Yuletide 2021,
In booklists: Working Class Lives, Art and Culture, Directors, Screenwriters and Playwrights, Writers and Poet's Lives and Works, Women in Theatre, TV, Film and Radio,
In categories: History & Biography, Society, Welfare, Justice & the State, Media & Culture, Music & Performing Arts, Poetry & Writing, Feminism & Women,

© News From Nowhere Co-operative Ltd IP24524R 2004-2024 | Privacy policy | Contact | return to top of page