Career
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. She has written plays for British Broadcasting Corporation Television"s Plays 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 and Interlude.
Billington has also written and continues to write journalism for newspapers in both the United Kingdom and the United States, including a three-year stint as columnist for the Sunday Telegraph.
Billington was President of English Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, the writers" organisation, from 1998 to 2001 and is now Honorary Vice-President. During her time as President Billington initiated Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association"s Readers & Writers programme which sends books and writers to meet readers in schools, prisons and other institutions which lack resources.
She is a Trustee of the Longford Trust which was set up in memory of her father, Lord Longford. She now writes a monthly column.
In addition she is a Trustee of the Catholic weekly, The Tablet, and of the Siobhan Dowd Trust, set up to encourage reading among disadvantaged children.