Join us to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the seminal work by Shelagh Delaney, with star Rita Tushingham and writer Charlotte Delaney, daughter of Shelagh, there to discuss the film and her work after.

Jo and her mother, Helen, live a transient life in the grey, bleak tenement houses of Manchester, continually moving in an attempt to stay one step ahead of angry landlords.

Left by herself as her mother spends evenings away with her latest boyfriend, Jo meets Jimmy, a black sailor on shore leave, and starts a brief relationship which is abruptly ended when Jimmy skips town.

As Helen moves in with her new husband, Jo sets out to lead an independent life and soon starts an unusual, loving relationship with a young, closeted homosexual named Geoffrey who is trying to escape problems of his own.

Delaney was just 19 when she wrote the play. It caused a huge stir and was a major hit in the West End and on Broadway. The screenplay of the 1961 film version of A Taste of Honey, which she co-wrote with director Tony Richardson, “contrives to keep in Delaney’s best lines while creating a cinematic, rather than a theatrical experience”. It won the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay – she was the first woman to win a craft award – and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award in 1962.