Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

Product Information

Stephen Tompkinson reads Keith Waterhouse's classic comic story about a young dreamer who fantasies about a more exciting life.

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

Yorkshire Film Archive is a charity registered in England and Wales (1093468) and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (04480153) Is it impossible for Billy to tell the truth, or is he merely a highly intelligent and imaginative youth, trapped in a conventional, working-class, North-of-England, why-you-reading-all-them-bloody-books-you-think-you’re-better-than-your-old-man type of upbringing? Billie Liar by Keith Waterhouse provided the latest foray into the world and mores of the late fifties. It’s yet another novel that resides firmly in northern English working class life. But unlike Alan Sillitoe, John Braine or Stan Bairstow, Billy Liar lives almost entirely in the comic. Until, that is, when it doesn’t.This terrific fearlessly funny book reflects the mind of a type of kid reluctantly becoming an adult. I am of this type. Billy Fisher is a dreamy, ironic, funny kid confronted with conformity and small minds in a small town in England circa 1953. It all seems so pointless to Billy that he greases his path and enlivens the journey by embellishing the truth, making things up, well if one wants to call it that, and many do, lying. The title of the song " Twisterella" is also the title of a song that Billy co-writes in the novel.

Billy Liar - AbeBooks Billy Liar - AbeBooks

He fought long crusades to highlight what he perceived to be a decline in the standards of modern English; for example, he founded the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe, whose members attempt to stem the tide of such solecisms as "potatoe's" and "pound's of apple's and orange's" in greengrocers' shops. [7] [8]

Retailers:

Keith Spencer Waterhouse CBE (6 February 1929 – 4 September 2009 [1]) was a British novelist and newspaper columnist and the writer of many television series. 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. As well as daydreaming the day away in his beloved Ambrosia, he spends most of his time thinking. Billy has two types of thinking: No.1 thinking which is deliberate, and controlled; and No.2 thinking which consists of obsessive speculation about all the what-if's of life, and to be avoided. 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."

Billy Liar, First Edition - AbeBooks Billy Liar, First Edition - AbeBooks

The publication of Billy Liar – 50 years ago this month – was a groundbreaking event. Keith Waterhouse's early novel proved to be his best, featuring regional speech, working-class characters and, best of all, a central character whose name would pass into popular mythology. The novel's timing was impeccable – as highlighted in a programme broadcast last week on Radio 4. Poet and author Blake Morrison travelled to Yorkshire to recall a world of sad cafés, suffocating expectations and sexual ignorance, which Billy Liar caught just before it vanished forever. And there is enough of a cliffhanger to keep you wanting to know: will Billy go to London (and leave his troubles and his two-and-a-half fiancees behind) or will he stay to face the music? The film adaptation is very faithful to the book (although the endings are subtly different) so there were no real plot surprises. It has been suggested that a local newspaper columnist parodied in both the book and the film bears a remarkable resemblance to the late-life Keith Waterhouse himself, when he was ensconced at the Daily Mail. [3]

Of course, like all lazy sods, what he wants to be is a scriptwriter. And this dream is, supposedly, on the verge of being fulfilled - comedian Danny Boon has written to Billy offering him a job down in London. Yeah, right. The other one's got bells on Billy!