Inspiring Older Readers
Tastes of Honey by Selina Todd
I greatly admire the work of Selina Todd, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University because she writes about the experience and significance of being working class by giving primacy to the voices and experiences of that class rather than providing the (often patronising) stare of the external (middle class) observer. Her review of working class history - The People: The rise and fall of the working class 1910-2010 – which was reviewed on this site a few years ago, was a much needed breath of fresh air in a stale discussion.
Todd hasn’t abandoned her interest in working class culture in her most recent book, Tastes of Honey, which profiles the work of playwright Shelagh Delaney. She approaches her subject not so much as a literary critic but as a cultural commentator, locating Delaney and her most famous play, A Taste of Honey, in its historical and social context. And it makes for a fascinating hybrid – part biography, part social critique, part literary criticism, part polemical reflection on the issues of gender equality (or the lack of it) – which is ultimately quite exhilarating.
Todd is clearly writing about someone she greatly admires – Delaney was a strong, determined woman with what were at the time unconventional and challenging views about women’s role in literature, drama, art and society and she was prepared to follow her own instincts even when the path led her away from fame and public recognition. Delaney cut a striking figure – tall, slim and with a unique sense of style – and she spent much of her life avoiding being dragged into conventional relationships, rejecting marriage as something that wasn’t for her. And, it would seem from the biographical profile we are given here, this disregard for the conventional was programmed into her from the earliest years.
This is not to say that Delaney didn’t want fame and fortune; the success of A Taste of Honey changed her life in every way but she never aspired to abandon the social class into which she was born or the values she grew up with. At the time, in the world of the arts, this was tantamount to the kiss of death – why didn’t she want to relocate to London and move in more elevated circles – and so she got unfairly tagged with reputation of being something of a ‘one-hit-wonder’ when in fact she has a sizeable and impressive body of work as dramatist, novelist and screen writer.
Todd also argues for the enduring relevance of Delaney as something of a cultural touchstone – the central role she played in the iconography of Morrissey and The Smiths is nicely dealt with. The significance of Delaney transcended the ephemeral nature of pop music:
“ Shelagh Delaney and Morrissey were links that connected Smiths fans with a working-class tradition of artistic innovation.”
What Todd wants to present us with is not just a portrait of Delaney but something that is closer to a thesis about class, culture and gender. It is an aim I think she achieves triumphantly and it’s something that Katheryn Hughes also identified in her review of the book that appeared in The Guardian on its release:
“…Todd argues that Delaney offers a route to rethinking the ways in which women’s lives in the mid-20th century are routinely written up, especially by feminists. The story that usually gets told is a middle-class one. It concerns a generation of women educated at either independent or grammar schools, who were brought up to believe they could do or be anything they wanted….The point, Todd suggests, is that Delaney is much more than an interesting outlier in the official annals of second-wave feminism. She is, rather, the thing itself, in all its unfathomable complexity.”
Exactly right.
Although this book is still only available in hardback at the time of writing this review, it can still be purchased for well under £10.
Terry Potter
November 2019