A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney

Backlisted

Backlisted Podcast

Arts, Books, Leisure, Hobbies

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dave Haslam and Melanie Williams join us to discuss A Taste of Honey (1958), Shelagh Delaney's first play, written and produced when the author was not yet 20 years old. To describe this as an expert panel would be an understatement: Dave Haslam is a former resident DJ at the legendary Haçienda club in Manchester and the author of Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop Cult City; Melanie Williams is a professor of film studies at UEA whose most recent book was the BFI monograph on the big screen adaptation of A Taste of Honey (1961). How did a Salford teenager change the face of British theatre? Nearly 70 years on, why do the play's themes and characters continue to resonate in the 21st century? And what did Shelagh Delaney do for an encore (and why do so few people know about it)? This show will open your eyes. On 27th Oct 2025 Backlisted is recording a show at 92NY in New York, on William Maxwell at the New Yorker. Tickets are available now from https://www.92ny.org. To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm gonnae. I'm gonna'a. The Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books.
0:32.9	The book featured on today's show is A Taste of Honey by Sheila Delaney,
0:42.9	first produced as a play in May 1958 when the author was still a teenager,
0:49.0	and subsequently published in script form by Methuen in January 1959.
0:53.7	I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously, and Inventry, an unreliable guide to my record collection.
0:58.4	I'm Dr. Una McCormack, science fiction author and associate fellow of Holminton College, Cambridge.
1:04.1	And I'm Nikki Birch, the producer and editor of Backlisted, and I'm excited to say I've got some big news for our American audience.
1:11.9	To celebrate 10 years of us podcasting about old books, backlist is going to New York.
1:18.0	That is right. We are going to be in New York City, in America, in the last week of October.
1:28.5	We're crossing the Atlantic to do at least two live shows
1:32.4	and we couldn't be more delighted about where they will take place
1:36.8	and what we'll be talking about.
1:39.0	Yeah, so on October the 27th, write this down, please.
1:42.0	October the 27th at 7.30pm will be appearing at the fabled
1:47.2	92nd Street Y or 92 NY as it's now known in Manhattan. That is a venue that has hosted
1:54.2	some of the greatest writers of the last hundred years. Orden, Baldwin and now backlisted.
2:01.6	Yeah, of course, but of course.
2:02.6	Yeah, so it feels like fitting that the subject of our show will be the legendary New Yorker editor and novelist William Maxwell.
2:10.6	We'll be celebrating Maxwell's work and the writers he championed.
2:13.6	People like, can you tell us who they are, Andy?
2:16.6	Well, John Cheever and J.D. Salinger, who we've never made backlisted shows about,
2:24.2	and Elizabeth Taylor and Sylvia Townsend Warner, who we can't stop making shows about,
	...

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