Skip to main content
Advertise Buy the paper Contact us Shop Subscribe Support us
Elaine Morgan: A Life Behind the Screen
Biography of a passionate socialist and feminist who made an outstanding contribution to popular drama

BIOGRAPHER Daryl Leeworthy has done an enormous service by providing this introduction to the important work of Elaine Morgan (1920-2013), who used her considerable talent to argue for socialism, peace, women’s liberation and progressive values.

She was also a prolific journalist, teacher, broadcaster and a serious theoretician who studied human evolution from a feminist perspective, with The [[{"fid":"30078","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]Descent of Woman (1972) among her most notable works.

Born in 1920 into a working-class family of Labour stalwarts in Pontypridd, Elaine (nee Floyd) became the first person from her school to go to Oxford, where she read English Literature.

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Features / 15 February 2025
15 February 2025
In order to defeat the far right, the left must set out a positive alternative – one that effectively addresses working people’s concerns, argues DAVID MORGAN
Features / 3 November 2023
3 November 2023
We are wracked by inequality, poverty, exclusion from housing, joblessness and more — we must put the working class in power to change the course of our nation, writes DAVID MORGAN
FICTION / 19 July 2020
19 July 2020
Ancient narrative given acute contemporary resonance
Features / 2 September 2018
2 September 2018
DAVID MORGAN argues that a ‘split’ in the Labour Party may not be catastrophic but that continued tolerance of the intolerable is not an option
Similar stories
Books / 3 October 2024
3 October 2024
JOHN GREEN marvels at the rediscovery of a radical US photographer who took the black civil rights movement to her heart
Books / 6 August 2024
6 August 2024
JOHN GREEN appreciates two photobooks that study the single room of a homeless hostel resident, and a council estate in Exeter
Exhibition review / 21 June 2024
21 June 2024
LYNNE WALSH applauds a show of paintings that demonstrates the forward strides made by women over four centuries 
BenchMarx / 17 May 2024
17 May 2024
ANDY HEDGECOCK celebrates the way that US writers have always used crime and sci-fi to explore and express dissident ideas