Rachel Billington

Billington worked in television in London and New York before taking up full-time writing in 1968. She has published twenty-one novels for adults, including the bestsellers A Woman’s Age and Bodily Harm. Her novel Glory (2015) describes the First World War Gallipoli campaign through the eyes of the participants and their wives and girlfriends at home. She has also written six children’s novels, six religious books for children and three non-fiction books, including The Great Umbilical, about mothers and daughters. She has written plays for BBC Television’s Play for Today series (Don’t Be Silly and Life After Death), and several radio plays, and has contributed to film scripts including The Light at the Edge of the World (1971). Billington has also written and continues to write journalism for newspapers in both the UK and the US, including a three-year stint as columnist for The Sunday Telegraph. She was President of English PEN from 1998 to 2001 and is now Honorary Vice-President. She is a Trustee of the Longford Trust which was set up in memory of her father, Lord Longford. Billington was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 for her services to literature.