The drama is set in Bolton and concerns the Crompton family, especially Rafe, the father, and his attempts to assert his authority in the household as his children grow up.
The original version, My Flesh, My Blood, was a BBC radio play broadcast on 17 August 1957 in the Saturday Night Theatre series.
By April 1958, a version for BBC Television had been broadcast and, in October 1959, a stage adaptation was presented at the Bolton Hippodrome.
Retitled Spring and Port Wine, the play was first produced in Birmingham prior to opening at London's Mermaid Theatre in November 1965, with Alfred Marks (as Rafe), Ruth Dunning (as Daisy), John Alderton (as Harold), Jennifer Wilson (as Florence), Jan Carey (as Hilda), Ray Mort (as Arthur), Gretchen Franklin (as Betsy Jane) and Melvyn Hayes (as Wilfred) in the cast.
[2][3] The play was adapted (by N. Richard Nash, who was uncredited) to a setting in the United States under the title Keep It in the Family, which ran on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre for five performances in September 1967.