Highbrow Winterson admits liking 'trash'

Jeanette Winterson, a writer who regards herself as a literary great, yesterday revealed she is a lover of trashy movies and chick lit novels.

She might have been expected to be distinctly sniffy about popular art forms. Ms Winterson sees her own work as a calling and has been known to berate journalists who express doubts about it.

But, speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival yesterday, Ms Winterson defended films such as Planet of the Apes and books such as Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary. "I went to see Planet of the Apes. It was a trashy watch but it's great," she said. "I loved Bridget Jones's Diary, and the film. I feel completely easy with all of that.

"I really like entertainment but I hate everything that's middlebrow. Let's have art or let's have entertainment. I don't like pseudo-literary crap where the sentences are just so incredibly bad and pass themselves off as high-minded and they're not – they're just bad."