Wire report
Billy Liar review – Tom Courtenay is superb in classic study of a young man and his quixotic dreams
Courtenay gives a beautiful performance as the undertaker’s clerk who nurses preposterous ambitions. But the film is too quick to surrender them This is John Schlesinger’s much-loved British comedy from 1963, based on the 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse, itself part of the now almost forgotten Angry Young Man movement of which John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim were the other two classic texts – though perhaps it is really only Osborne’s hero who is actually angry. Tom Courtenay plays Billy, a cheeky, naughty young man who is as daft as a brush and lives semi-permanently inside his own Walter Mitty-ish fantasy world. (Amis’s Jim Dixon had his own propensity to indulge in micro-imagined situations to get him out of whatever mortifying little class-based humiliations he found himself in.) Billy lives at home in Yorkshire with his mum and dad and works as an unde
coverage / Wire report
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Courtenay gives a beautiful performance as the undertaker’s clerk who nurses preposterous ambitions. But the film is too quick to surrender them This is John Schlesinger’s much-loved British comedy from 1963, based on the 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse, itself part of the now almost forgotten Angry Young Man movement of which John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim were the other two classic texts – though perhaps it is really only Osborne’s hero who is actually angry. Tom Courtenay plays Billy, a cheeky, naughty young man who is as daft as a brush and lives semi-permanently inside his own Walter Mitty-ish fantasy world. (Amis’s Jim Dixon had his own propensity to indulge in micro-imagined situations to get him out of whatever mortifying little class-based humiliations he found himself in.) Billy lives at home in Yorkshire with his mum and dad and works as an unde
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According to The Guardian’s linked report, Billy Liar review – Tom Courtenay is superb in classic study of a young man and his quixotic dreams, Courtenay gives a beautiful performance as the undertaker’s clerk who nurses preposterous ambitions. But the film is too quick to surrender them This is John Schlesinger’s much-loved British comedy from 1963, based on the 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse, itself part of the now almost forgotten Angry Young Man movement of which John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim were the other two classic texts – though perhaps it is really only Osborne’s hero who is actually angry. Tom Courtenay plays Billy, a cheeky, naughty young man who is as daft as a brush and lives semi-permanently inside his own Walter Mitty-ish fantasy world. (Amis’s Jim Dixon had his own propensity to indulge in micro-imagined situations to get him out of whatever mortifying little class-based humiliations he found himself in.) Billy lives at home in Yorkshire with his mum and dad and works as an unde
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The development sits in VINI’s Culture coverage for readers following arts, entertainment, fashion, film, music, celebrity, and the business of culture. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The linked report is dated 2026-07-29T10:00:30+00:00.
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Primary source: Billy Liar review – Tom Courtenay is superb in classic study of a young man and his quixotic dreams via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.
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- Billy Liar review – Tom Courtenay is superb in classic study of a young man and his quixotic dreamsThe Guardian - 2026-07-29T10:00:30+00:00
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