Anne Billson

Anne Billson (born 1954) is a writer, film critic and novelist who was born in Southport, England. Granta named Billson one of the "Best Young British Novelists" in 1993; her fiction combines horror with satire. She has worked as the film critic of The Sunday Telegraph (1992–2001), and other newspapers. She has written film reviews for the New Statesman & Society (1991–92) and Time Out. Her works of nonfiction include Cats on Film (2017).

Quotes

• The truly radical sub-text, however, is that a heroine can be politically motivated, a good dancer, attractive to the opposite sex, and fat all at the same time.
  • From a review of Hairspray, Monthly Film Bulletin (July 1988), as reproduced in "'About as near to family entertainment as John Waters has ever come': Hairspray reviewed in 1988", BFI website (9 June 2023)

• "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist," said Verbal Kint (paraphrasing Charles Baudelaire) in The Usual Suspects. This might have been true back in Kint's heyday, but nowadays it's depressingly obvious that devils do indeed exist, clad in the trappings of politics, religion or super-wealth as they sow conflict, contagion, oppression and conspiracy theories throughout the world.
  • "'Good and evil are at war, and the battlefield is the female body': how Satanic horror has returned to haunt the age of Trump", The Guardian (5 April 2024)

Quotes about Billson

• She's less one of the inner echelon of elder statesmen issuing judgement, and more your incredibly well-viewed friend who particularly loves genre movies, but also beer and cats.
  • Jane Giles "A pantheon of one's own: 25 Female Film Critics Worth Celebrating", Sight & Sound online (2015, updated 19 June 2018)