Michael Billington

Abstract

Michael Billington began reviewing films, plays and television programmes for the Times in 1965. In 1968, he became film critic for the Birmingham Post and the Illustrated London News. Billington has been drama critic for the Guardian since 1971. He has written Alan Ayckboum (1984), Stoppard: The Playwright (1987), One Night Stands: A Critic’s View of Modern British Theatre (1994, reissued in 2001 to mark his thirtieth year as a drama critic), and The Life and Work of Harold Pinter (2001). He has also edited Stage and Screen Lives (2002). He is currently working on a survey of postwar British theatre from 1945 to the present, entitled State of the Nation. In June 2003, Billington was voted Britain’s ‘most trustworthy’ critic on the theatre website Whatsonstage.com. The interview that follows was conducted in London on 30 June 2003.