Miriam Gross has had a long and distinguished career as a literary editor. She was the Deputy Literary editor of The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

from 1969–81, the Women’s editor of The Observer from 1981–84, the Arts editor of The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

from 1986–91, and the Literary editor of The Sunday Telegraph from 1991-2005. She served as senior editor (and a co-founder) of Standpoint

Standpoint (magazine)

Standpoint is a monthly British cultural and political magazine. Its premier issue was published at the end of May 2008 – the first launch of a major current affairs publication in the UK in more than a decade....

magazine from 2008–10 and now serves on their advisory board.

Writing in The Spectator

The Spectator

The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...

(June 6, 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 (1976).

While at The Observer, she conducted a series of high-profile interviews, with, among others, the poet Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...

, playwright Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

, thriller writer John le Carre

John le Carré

David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...

, painter Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (painter)

Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...

, Nobel prize winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...

, novelist Anthony Powell

Anthony Powell

Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....

, 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 is a member of The Literary Society

The Literary Society

The Literary Society is a London dining club, founded by William Wordsworth and others in 1807. Its members are generally either prominent figures in English literature or eminent people in other fields with a strong interest in literature. No papers are delivered at its meetings. It meets monthly...

, which is based at the Garrick Club in London. 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 much media discussion.

Family and education

She was born in Jerusalem in pre-state Israel, her Jewish parents, the late Kurt May

Kurt May

Kurt May was director of The United Restitution Organization, which assisted victims of Nazism, from its inception in 1948 to his retirement at age 91, in 1988....

 and Vera May, having fled Nazi Germany. She grew up in Jerusalem, Switzerland and England. She was educated at Dartington Hall School and at Oxford University where she read English literature at St Anne's College. She was married to the literary and theatrical critic John Gross

John Gross

John Gross FRSL was an eminent English author, anthologist, literary and theatrical critic. The Spectator magazine called Gross “the best-read man in Britain”, as did The Guardian...

 (1965-88), the couple had two children Tom Gross

Tom Gross

Tom Gross is a British-born journalist and international affairs commentator, specializing in the Middle East. He was formerly Jerusalem correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph and for the New York Daily News...

 and Susanna Gross

Susanna Gross

Susanna Gross has been the books editor of The Mail on Sunday since 1999. She was born in London and educated at the University of York. She previously worked as an editor at the Daily Mail, was features editor of Harper’s & Queen and was deputy editor of The Week.She is also a keen bridge player,...

, and since 1993 has been married to Sir Geoffrey Owen, the former editor of The Financial Times.

Recently, a portrait of Miriam Gross was exhibited at the Marlborough Fine Art gallery in London's Mayfair.