- Although she is the sole credited writer on "Sunday, Bloody Sunday", several people have suggested that others were involved. Two writers, David Sherwin and Ken Levison, are given a non-specific acknowledgment in the end credits of the film, and Sherwin has several times said that he did a full rewrite on the script. When the film opened in London in 1971, the review in "The Times" newspaper mentioned this alleged contribution; there was an immediate retraction after a complaint by Penelope Gilliatt, who was always most insistent that she alone wrote the film. After her death, director John Schlesinger was extremely vituperative about her, according to his biographer William Mann, who also claims there was extensive rewriting.
- It was reported that the cause of her relatively early death was chronic alcoholism.
- For a time, she lived with director Mike Nichols.
- A profile of novelist Graham Greene which she wrote for "The New Yorker" so incensed its subject that he demanded (and received) an apology, a very rare thing in that magazine's history.
- The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby was for many years her companion.
- After Graham Greene's complaint about her, "The New Yorker" removed her from the post of its film critic (one she shared with Pauline Kael) and would only publish short fiction by her.
- Her first husband, Dr. Roger Gilliatt, was the best man at the wedding of Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones (later Lord Snowden). This was much noted by British newspapers when she left him, not long afterwards.
- Also well-known as film critic, notably for "The Observer" (London) and "The New Yorker" (New York).
- Also well-known as novelist and short-story writer.
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