Harriett Gilbert

Harriett Sarah Gilbert (born 25 August 1948) is an English writer, academic and broadcaster, particularly of arts and book programmes on the BBC World Service. She is the daughter of the writer Michael Gilbert. Besides World Book Club on the World Service, she also presents A Good Read on BBC Radio 4. Before the programme was cancelled, she also presented the BBC World Service programme The Strand.

Born in Hornsey, London, Gilbert was educated at the French Lycée in London and at a succession of boarding schools. "Growing Pains" was her contribution to Truth, Dare or Promise (1985), a collection of autobiographical writing. After graduating from drama school, her first acting role was as Mother Elephant in a production of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories for primary schools. The other peak of her success was playing a secretary murdered on page five of a BBC radio drama. She also worked as a nanny, a waitress, an artist's model and a clerk-typist. She began to write in her twenties.

She nominated A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, first read to her by her father when she was eight, as a life-changing book. The one piece of advice her father, the writer Michael Gilbert, gave her about writing was: "For God's sake, don't use adverbs." Her brother is the The Independent journalist Gerard Gilbert.

From 1983 to 1988 she was literary editor of the New Statesman and, before that, of City Limits (1981–83). She has also contributed to Time Out, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. She was a judge of the 2011 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

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