Shelagh Delaney, English playwright and television screenwriter, was born in 1939 in Salford, Lancashire to a bus inspector. At the age of 18, she completed her most famous play, A Taste of Honey, which recounts the story of a young white woman's difficult home life and the pregnancy that results from her affair with a black sailor. When it was produced in London in 1958, Delaney won immediate critical praise. She followed her success with another play, The Lion in Love. Delaney's screenplay, Dancing with a Stranger, tells the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in England. It is recognized as a brilliant insight into Ellis's life and the forces that caused her to murder her… lover.