Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

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Billy Liar is a short book. Joyce’s Ulysses is longer. But they both inhabit similar territory in that they follow a principal character through one day’s eventless events. Viewed in this light, Billy Liar becomes potentially much more than a comic romp through northern English quaintness. Kathy's father realises the connection to the missing criminal and the police are called in to apprehend the criminal. The father waits outside the barn with a shotgun. He chose the Mail, over the pleas of every other national editor, when he left the Daily Mirror in 1986 after 35 years when the late Robert Maxwell took over. Crowther, Bosley (23 April 1962). "Screen: 'Whistle Down the Wind' From Britain:Artful Story of Guest in a Barn Arrives (Published 1962)"– via NYTimes.com.

The film was favourably reviewed upon its original release, including praise from The New York Times. [10] Awards [ edit ]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. It was perhaps his best-known work - the story of a funeral parlour worker with a humdrum life, who spends most of his time dreaming of ways to escape his drab existence in Yorkshire. I thought I was the only one who did this. The interior secondary monologue for my own amusement, since when I manage to say out loud what I think is great fun and such an amazing observation--it turns out I am as alone as the little prince on his lonely planet.

This marvellous little novel covers a momentous Saturday in the life of nineteen-year-old Billy Fisher in a small town in Yorkshire. It’s 1959, and Billy’s lower-middleclass family wallows in the unchallenging comforts and conformity of dull, mediocre Stradhoughton. Everything is routine and predictable, which to the intelligent and creative Billy is unbearable, and he constantly retreats from the tedium into his inner fantasy world – Ambrosia – where he is a hero in the tradition of Thurber’s Walter Mitty. His career began at the Yorkshire Evening Post and he also wrote regularly for Punch, the Daily Mirror, and latterly for the Daily Mail. He initially joined the Mirror as a reporter in 1952, before he became a playwright and novelist; during his initial stint, he campaigned against the colour bar in post-war Britain, [2] the abuses committed in the name of the British Empire in Kenya [3] and the British government's selling of weapons to various Middle Eastern countries. [4] Subsequently, he returned as a columnist, initially in the Mirror Magazine, moving to the main newspaper on 22 June 1970, [5] on Mondays, and extending to Thursdays from 16 July 1970. Extracts from the columns were published in the books Mondays, Thursdays and Rhubarb, Rhubarb and Other Noises. His habitual embroidery of the truth, has left him tangled in a web of pointless lies. He has told:

Waterhouse left school at 15 with no formal qualifications but said: "I wanted to be a writer from before I could write. And all along, I think, I wanted to work in newspapers." When he stepped down from the newspaper in May this year, current editor Paul Dacre paid tribute to the curmudgeonly columnist. In contrast with the children's concerns about Jesus, their local vicar's concerns are earthly. After being interrupted by Kathy in his reading at a café of Gently At The Summit, her parish priest avoids all questions of Christ and turns the tables, accusing the world of stealing church property. I wished I’d written Keith Waterhouse’s first novel; and now, even more, I wish I’d written his second . . . Billy Liar is very funny: funny in a wild and sardonic and high-spirited way without malice or cruelty.’ - John Braine, author of Room at the Top We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a newreadership."

His father, who sold fruit and vegetables, died when he was four, leaving the family in the writer's own words, "ridiculously, almost unbelievably, poor". All the while, he was churning out sometimes serious, often humorous newspaper columns - working every day on his trusted Adler typewriter.The film adaptation is very faithful to the book (although the endings are subtly different) so there were no real plot surprises. In that rare occasion for literary novels (at least the few I’ve read!), the characterizations all come alive for me. I thought each character brings something unique and memorable to the table, even if Billy scornfully lumps everyone but himself into one conforming category. Which isn’t inaccurate but within conformity, each person can still carve a niche. Arthur, his best buddy, has it figured out, so did the sage dinosaur Councillor Duxbury, and the free-spirited Liz, and all the wonderfully-drawn lively characters of distinct personalities. They understand Billy more than he does himself as they watch him march in circles to the beat of his own drum rather than face the music. He’ll come around, that is the hope, but until then he’s still just going round and round and round with London no nearer today than yesterday.