Andrew Billen
Andrew William Scott Billen (born 30 December 1957) is a British journalist, children's author, and the main television reviewer for The Times newspaper.[1][2]
Early life
He was born in London and brought up in Brentwood, Essex. He attended Brentwood School from 1965 to 1977, which at the time was still a direct grant grammar school.
He gained a BA in English from Oxford, where he studied from 1977 to 1980 at Christ Church.
Career
Television
He has contributed to television programmes, notably Newsnight Review, now known as The Review Show.
Newspapers
He started on newspapers at the Sheffield Star, a daily newspaper across South Yorkshire. From 1984 he was a writer on the Times Diary for The Times and became the paper's arts correspondent in 1988. In 1989 he moved to The Observer. In 1997 he joined the London Evening Standard as Chief Interviewer.
He returned to The Times in 2002, where he wrote the weekly "The Andrew Billen Interview" for five years. He has been the paper's main television reviewer since 2007. For ten years up to 2007 he worked in a freelance capacity as the New Statesman′s TV critic. He later became its theatre reviewer. In 2006 he won a prize at the Press Gazette′s Magazine Design & Journalism Awards. In 2008 he was again critic of the year in the same awards. He was three times shortlisted for interviewer of the year in the UK Press Awards.
Publications
- Who Was Sam Johnson?, 20 May 2004 (Short Books).
- Who Was Charles Dickens?, 13 October 2005 (Short Books),[3] ISBN 1904977189, republished in hardback on 5 November 2000 as The Boy Who Invented Christmas (Short Books).
Personal life
Billen lives in Oxford. He is married and has two daughters.
See also
- Alex Hardy
References
- ↑ Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond Janet McCabe, Kim Akass - 2007 - 42 "In journalism, too, Andrew Billen, for example, wrote a two-page article for the Observer on 28 July 2002 entitled 'Why I love American TV and subheaded 'British television could once boast the best writers, actors and directors in the world...."
- ↑ Writing Feature Articles Brendan Hennessy - 2012 "Andrew Billen - Andrew Billen began his career in journalism on the Sheffield Star in 1980. Since 1993 he has written The Billen Interview for, successively, The Observer, the London Evening Standard, and The Times.
- ↑ Short Books
External links
| Media offices | ||
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| Preceded by |
Television critic: The Times March 2007- |
Succeeded by Incumbent |