Tastes of Honey: Shelagh Delaney, class and feminism in postwar Britain

A Socialist History Society Public Zoom Meeting
Saturday 26 September, 2020 2:00 PM London
Speaker: Professor Selina Todd, Professor of Modern History at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She has been President of the Socialist Educational Association since 2017.

Her research interests focus on working-class, women’s and feminist history in modern Britain. Her research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Arts Council England, the Economic History Society and the Royal Historical Society.

Selina’s first book, Young women, work, and family in England, 1918-1950 (Oxford, 2005) won the Women’s History Network annual book prize. Her second book, The People: the rise and fall of the working class, 1910-2010 (London, 2014) reached the bestseller list. Her most recent book about the Salford-born writer, Shelagh Delaney, appeared in 2019 and is titled Tastes of Honey: the making of Shelagh Delaney and a cultural revolution. She is currently writing a history of social mobility in modern Britain.

Of her work, Selina says, “I am very interested in how history can inform the present and help us create a more egalitarian future. I work closely with communities and organisations that share this vision. These include MaD Theatre Company in Manchester, the Socialist Educational Association, A Woman’s Place UK and policymakers interested in sex and class equality.”

Professor Todd counts E P Thompson as one of the historians who has greatly influenced her approach to writing history.