Anne Billson (born 1954) is a writer, photographer, and film critic who was born in Southport, England. Her fiction is characterized by the combination of horror with satire and includes the novels Suckers (1993), Stiff Lips (1997), The Ex (2012), [1] The Coming Thing (2017) and The Half Man (2019). In 2019, she self-published a fantasy novel, Blood Pearl.[ citation needed ] Granta named Billson one of the "Best Young British Novelists" in 1993.
Billson was the film critic of The Sunday Telegraph (1992–2001), The Sunday Correspondent (1989-1990), and Today (1986). She has written film reviews for Time Out , Tatler (1989–90), and the New Statesman & Society (1991–92). [2] Billson has written several volumes of nonfiction, including monographs on movies such as John Carpenter's The Thing and Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In . Her 2017 book Cats on Film claims to be "the definitive work of feline film scholarship." [3]
In 2015, she was chosen by the British Film Institute as one of “25 Female Film Critics Worth Celebrating.” [4] She has lived in London, Tokyo, Paris, Croydon and Brussels, and now lives in Antwerp. She is a programmer and presenter at Offscreen Film Festival in Brussels.
Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Anne Fine is an English writer. Although best known for children's books, she also writes for adults. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and she was appointed an OBE in 2003.
Angela Olive Pearce, who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She is mainly known for her book The Bloody Chamber (1979). In 1984, her short story "The Company of Wolves" was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2012, Nights at the Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Michael Frayn, FRSL is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy.
Buchi Emecheta was a Nigerian writer who wrote novels, plays, autobiography, and children's book. She is known for her first novel, Second Class Citizen (1974). Others include The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Emecheta has been characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".
Roderick Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. He is the author of eleven novels for adults, eight books for children, seven plays and screenplays, and dozens of short stories. Several of his books have been made into films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. Doyle's work is set primarily in Ireland, especially working-class Dublin, and is notable for its heavy use of dialogue written in slang and Irish English dialect. Doyle was awarded the Booker Prize in 1993 for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.
Dame Jilly Cooper, is an English author. She began her career as a journalist and wrote numerous works of non-fiction before writing several romance novels, the first of which appeared in 1975. Cooper is most famous for writing the Rutshire Chronicles.
Francis Henry King was a British novelist and short-story writer. He worked for the British Council for 15 years, with positions in Europe and Japan. For 25 years, he was a chief book reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph, and for 10 years its theatre critic.
Zoë Kate Hinde Heller is an English journalist and novelist long resident in New York City. She has published three novels, Everything You Know (1999), Notes on a Scandal (2003), and The Believers (2008). Notes on a Scandal was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was adapted for a feature film in 2006.
Dame Marina Sarah Warner, is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the New Statesman, Sunday Times, and Vogue. She has been a visiting professor, given lectures and taught on the faculties of many universities.
Romola Sadie Garai is a Hong Kong-born British actress and film director. Known for her extensive work on stage and screen, she often acts in period films. Her early film roles include Nicholas Nickleby (2002), I Capture the Castle (2003), Inside I'm Dancing (2004), and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004). She has gained prominence for her performances in the critically acclaimed costume dramas such as Vanity Fair (2004), As You Like It (2006), Amazing Grace (2007), Atonement (2007), Glorious 39 (2009), and Suffragette (2015).
Helen Sonia Cooper is a British illustrator and an author of children's literature. She grew up in Cumbria, where she practiced literature and piano playing. She currently lives in Oxford.
Caroline Alice Lejeune was a British writer, best known for serving as the film critic for The Observer from 1928 to 1960. She was among the earliest newspaper film critics in Britain, and one of the first British women in the profession. She formed an enduring friendship early in her career with Alfred Hitchcock, “when he was writing and ornamenting sub-titles for silent pictures,” as she later wrote.
Celia Haddon is a British journalist, author and expert on feline behaviour. Her books have sold over 1 million copies.
Penelope Gilliatt was an English novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and film critic. As one of the main film critics for The New Yorker magazine in the 1960s and 1970s, Gilliatt was known for her detailed descriptions and evocative reviews. A writer of short stories, novels, non-fiction books, and screenplays, Gilliatt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971).
Andrew Timothy Birkin is an English screenwriter and director.
Anupama Chopra (née Chandra) is an Indian author, journalist and film critic who served as the festival director of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival from 2015 to 2023. She is also the founder and editor of the now-defunct digital platform Film Companion, which offered a curated look at cinema with an emphasis on Indian film. She has written several books on Indian cinema and has been a film critic for NDTV and India Today, as well as the Hindustan Times. She also hosted a weekly film review show, The Front Row With Anupama Chopra, on Star World. She won the 2000 National Film Award for Best Book on Cinema for her first book Sholay: The Making of a Classic. Chopra joined the Indian iteration of the film journalism outlet The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, launched domestically in the same year by the RP Sanjiv Goenka Group.
Anne Teresa Enright is an Irish writer. The first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015–2018) and winner of the Man Booker Prize (2007), she has published eight novels, many short stories, and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about the birth of her two children. Her essays on literary themes have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of The Irish Times and The Guardian. Her fiction explores themes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.
Wendy Perriam is a British novelist, whose work often reflects her strict convent background, against which she rebelled sharply, and her stories contain much explicit sexual content. She has also appeared frequently on radio and TV.
Anne Haverty is an Irish novelist and poet. Haverty was educated at Trinity College Dublin and the Sorbonne and in 1992 won a scholarship to the European Film School at Ebeltoft in Denmark. Among Haverty's novels, One Day as a Tiger won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1997.