Edna

Winner of the Writer's Guild Best Television Play and Critic's Choice Best Television Play

Edna the Inebriate Woman was written when Jeremy Sandford, whose Cathy Come Home had focused public attention on the plight of homeless families, decided to study the equally grave problems faced by Britains thousands of single homeless people.

The author follows Edna on her continuous journey through town and country and shows us at first hand the shortcomings and sheer absurdities of a society whose response to Edna's predicament is insensitive, inappropriate anc expensive. At the time of writing, Edna, threadbare and half-drunk, was one of Britains growing down and out population, a population that has only grown since the 1970s. Sandfords own anger and impatience with our reluctance to help is infectious.

With Cathy Come Home, this script has perhaps done more than any other piece of documentary literature to improve the public attitude towards these often desperate people. The story of Edna is authentic, at times hilariously comic; a frightening personal dossier on what it is like for so many people to live beyond the reach society's rescue services.