Billy is an employee in an undertaker. He spends the first part of his Saturday morning at work, as everyone did in that era. He strolls around town, goes to the pub, meets a girlfriend or two and then comes down to earth. It’s a special day for Billy because he’s convinced himself that he is about to enter the big time as a comedy writer for a name in London. From start to finish, however, Billy is deluding himself. Billy is also engaged to not one but two local young women, the sweet and virginal Barbara ( Helen Fraser) and the rough and ready Rita ( Gwendolyn Watts). Unbeknown to both women, they share an engagement ring. It is the freewheeling Liz ( Julie Christie) who has just recently returned from London however that Billy is truly in love with. Billy dreams big - of becoming a famous scriptwriter, of leaving behind his drab existence and running away to London and of making it with the wonderful free spirit played by Julie Christie in the film. And, somehow, we know that none of it will happen. As you can see there is a rather large and influential history behind this book and having finally gotten around to reading it I can see why. Despite taking place over just the one day this is still a coming of age tale, it brings us in to Billy's life as he becomes aware that he has to make changes and the events that transpire in that day are enough to help him work some things out in his mind, if not necessarily making those changes. I've seen comparisons to The Catcher in the Rye and I would definitely agree with those only Waterhouse gives us a wonderful almost python-esque comedy at the same time making for a much more enjoyable and accessible read. The classic comedy of a 50s youth trapped inside a Walter Mitty fantasy-world, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

Billy Liar review – teenage dreamer is as witty as ever in a Billy Liar review – teenage dreamer is as witty as ever in a

Billy Liar is the chronicle of one decisive day in the life of its protagonist Billy Fisher; capturing brilliantly the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town in Yorkshire after the second world war, it describes a young fantasist with a job at a 'funeral furnisher' and a bedroom at his parents' – and longing for escape to the Good Life in London. The film belongs to the British New Wave, inspired by both the earlier kitchen sink realism movement and the French New Wave. Characteristic of the style is a documentary/ cinéma vérité feel and the use of real locations (in this case, many in the city of Bradford in Yorkshire [5]). Some have described Billy Liar as a coming-of-age novel. This is true in the sense that Billy certainly falls within the age group transitioning from teenage innocence to adult responsibility. However, it’s no Bildungsroman , which Wikipedia defines as “a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is important.” In 2004, Total Film named Billy Liar the 12th in its list of the greatest British Films of all time. Grouped with the Angry Young Men of British letters, who came to prominence in the late 50s and early 60s, Waterhouse's most famous creation is less angry with the status quo of post-war Britain than Arthur Seaton and Jimmy Porter, instead finding an escape from his frustrations by living in a dream world half of the time.Billy Fisher, the central character, is an intelligent, creative, educated, lower middle class 19 year old who is frustrated by his surroundings and dull clerical job at a local undertakers. His response is to retreat into Ambrosia, his private fantasy world, where he is a hero. He also responds by lying, indeed he's a pathological liar. His ludicrous deceptions result in some very amusing situations, but also in the melancholy that lies at the heart of the book. Billy dreams of moving to London, to work as a comic scriptwriter, and he has received some encouragement from an established comedian. As he works out how to make his move, his past catches up with him: multiple girlfriends, exasperated parents, his Gran, tiresome colleagues and some quite serious work misdemeanours. He manages to sabotage his engagement to Barbara (aka "The Witch") by borrowing her engagement ring, supposedly to take it to the jeweller's "to be adjusted", and giving it to his other girlfriend Rita! Oh, and then there's Liz as well...

Billy Liar (1959) - Valancourt Books Billy Liar (1959) - Valancourt Books

Keenan, John (11 August 2009). "Fifty years on, Billy Liar has not grown old". The Guardian . Retrieved 4 November 2021. His 1959 book Billy Liar was subsequently filmed by John Schlesinger with Tom Courtenay as Billy. It was nominated in six categories of the 1964 BAFTA awards, including Best Screenplay, and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1963; in the early 1970s the sitcom Billy Liar based on the character was quite popular and ran to 25 episodes.Billy Liar has been classed among a series of films made in the late 1950s and early 1960s as ‘kitchen sink dramas’: dramas that are viewed as being socially or morally realistic. These usually have a domestic setting – although the film The Kitchen (1961), directed by Yorkshireman James Hill of an Arnold Wesker play, is set in a hotel kitchen. It is interesting to set Billy Liar against another film made the year before, A Taste of Honey, adapted for film in 1961 by Tony Richardson from the play by Shelagh Delaney. This is perhaps the most challenging of the ‘kitchen sink dramas’. Like other films made by ‘New Wave’ directors, Billy Liar, with its stereotyped female characters, can be accused of a certain misogyny – although the male characters are equally stereotyped and Liz represents someone new and different. But A Taste of Honey goes beyond the issue of class to openly explore race, gender and sexual orientation at a time when few others were doing so. It went on to win four BAFTA film awards, best actor (Murray Melvin) and best actress (Rita Tushingham) at Cannes (1962), and Tony Richardson and Shelagh Delaney between them won the Writer’s Guild Award (1963).