Miriam Gross

Miriam Gross (Lady Owen) is a literary editor and writer in Britain.

Contents

• SEBASTIAN FAULKS in conversation with Miriam Gross
• Mother Cooking Ham and Bacon for Miriam and Her Brother
• Family and education
• References

She was the Deputy Literary editor of The Observer from 1969 to 1981, the Women's editor of The Observer from 1981 to 1984, the Arts editor of The Daily Telegraph from 1986 to 1991, and the Literary editor of The Sunday Telegraph from 1991 to 2005. She served as senior editor (and co-founder) of Standpoint magazine from 2008–10 and now serves on their advisory board. Writing in The Spectator (6 June 1988), the historian Paul Johnson said that "the beautiful and elegant Miriam Gross is queen of the lit eds."

From 1986–88 she edited Channel Four's Book Choice. She is also the editor of two collections of essays, The World of George Orwell (1971) and The World of Raymond Chandler (1977).

While at The Observer, she conducted a series of interviews, with, among others, the poet Philip Larkin, playwright Harold Pinter, thriller writer John le Carré, painter Francis Bacon, Nobel Prize–winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, novelist Anthony Powell, philosopher and historian Sir Isaiah Berlin, philosopher A. J. Ayer, and Svetlana Stalin (Stalin's daughter). (Some of these interviews have been republished in books, including Required Writing by Philip Larkin, and Pinter in the Theatre.)

More recently, she has been a contributor to The Spectator, as the magazine's diarist, and has written an occasional column for the Financial Times. She has also served as a judge on the Booker prize and on the George Orwell memorial prize.

Her July 2010 policy essay on education in London schools, "So why Can't they Read?", commissioned by London mayor Boris Johnson, generated some media discussion. She is the author of a memoir, An Almost English Life.