Harriett Gilbert
Encyclopedia
Harriett Sarah Gilbert 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 The Strand and World Book Club
on the World Service, she also presents A Good Read
on BBC Radio 4
.
's Just So Stories
. She also worked as a nanny, a waitress, an artist's model and a clerk-typist. She took up writing 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 Independent
journalist Gerard Gilbert.
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
.
From 1992 she lectured in the Department of Journalism at the City University, London
, where until 2008 she was also the programme director of the MA
Creative writing (novels) course.
Harriett Gilbert presents two programmes on BBC World Service radio: the Monday and Friday editions of the daily arts programme The Strand
and World Book Club
, broadcast on the first Saturday in each month. Guests on the latter have included the Nobel laureates Doris Lessing
, Toni Morrison
, VS Naipaul, Orhan Pamuk
, Wole Soyinka
and Derek Walcott
.
About presenting for the World Service, she has said, "I think I'm doing the dream job, I just love it, and I can't think of anywhere else I'd like to be".
In 2011 she was chosen to replace Sue MacGregor
as presenter of the Radio 4
book programme A Good Read
.
Gilbert has introduced the World Service arts documentary series Close Up. In 2008 she stood in as presenter of the arts programme The Ticket. She previously presented the World Service's dedicated book programme The Word
. Besides this she has presented arts programmes for BBC Radio 4
, BBC Radio 3
and BBC Four
television.
Writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen
called her "one of the very best presenters of arts programmes on radio or TV". The Financial Times
said of her, "the splendid Harriett Gilbert [...] painfully shows up certain would-be arty Radio 4 colleagues".
She is the author of six novels, including Hotels With Empty Rooms and The Riding Mistress. Her non-fiction books include A Women's History of Sex and The Sexual Imagination from Acker
to Zola
. She scripted the short animated film The Stain (1991) viewable at the Internet Archive.
Although she has not published a novel since 1983 she hopes to return to writing, possibly using her time at City University as inspiration.
At the 2009 Bath Literature Festival
, she and the novelist Michèle Roberts
discussed "Guilty Pleasures" (Dorothy L. Sayers
and Georgette Heyer
) as well as the enduring appeal of cross-dressing, duelling, and driving Daimlers.
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
. She is the daughter of the writer Michael Gilbert
Michael Gilbert
Michael Francis Gilbert, CBE was a British writer of both fictional mysteries and thrillers who wrote as Michael Gilbert.-Life and work:...
. Besides The Strand and World Book Club
World Book Club
World Book Club is a radio programme on the BBC World Service. Each edition of the programme, which is broadcast on the first Saturday of the month with repeats into the following Monday, features a famous author discussing one of his or her books, often the most well-known one, with the public...
on the World Service, she also presents A Good Read
A Good Read
A Good Read is one of BBC Radio 4's longest running programmes where two guests join the main presenter to choose and discuss their favourite book. Sue MacGregor stepped down in 2010 as the programme's longest serving presenter...
on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
.
Biography
Harriett Gilbert was educated at the French Lycée in London and at a succession of boarding schools. She wrote about her early years in "Growing Pains", her contribution to a 1985 collection of autobiographical writing Truth, Dare or Promise. She subsequently went to drama school. On graduating, her first and last acting job was as Mother Elephant in Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's Just So Stories
Just So Stories
The Just So Stories for Little Children were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. They are highly fantasised origin stories and are among Kipling's best known works.-Description:...
. She also worked as a nanny, a waitress, an artist's model and a clerk-typist. She took up writing in her twenties.
She nominated A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
Richard Hughes (writer)
Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.He was born in Weybridge, Surrey. His father was a civil servant Arthur Hughes, and his mother Louisa Grace Warren who had been brought up in Jamaica...
, 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
Michael Gilbert
Michael Francis Gilbert, CBE was a British writer of both fictional mysteries and thrillers who wrote as Michael Gilbert.-Life and work:...
, gave her about writing was: "For God's sake, don't use adverbs." Her brother is the Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
journalist Gerard Gilbert.
Career
From 1983-1988 she was literary editor of The New StatesmanThe New Statesman
The New Statesman is an award-winning British sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative government of the time...
and, before that, of City Limits (1981-83). She has also contributed to Time Out, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, and The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
. She was a judge of the 2011 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the financial support...
.
From 1992 she lectured in the Department of Journalism at the City University, London
City University, London
City University London , is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute and became a university in 1966, when it adopted its present name....
, where until 2008 she was also the programme director of the MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
Creative writing (novels) course.
Harriett Gilbert presents two programmes on BBC World Service radio: the Monday and Friday editions of the daily arts programme The Strand
The Strand (radio)
The Strand is the BBC World Service's daily arts show. It was launched on Monday 27 October 2008. It is regularly hosted by Harriett Gilbert, Mark Coles, Anna McNamee, and Bidisha.-Format:...
and World Book Club
World Book Club
World Book Club is a radio programme on the BBC World Service. Each edition of the programme, which is broadcast on the first Saturday of the month with repeats into the following Monday, features a famous author discussing one of his or her books, often the most well-known one, with the public...
, broadcast on the first Saturday in each month. Guests on the latter have included the Nobel laureates Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
, Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
, VS Naipaul, Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk , generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing....
, Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
and Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...
.
About presenting for the World Service, she has said, "I think I'm doing the dream job, I just love it, and I can't think of anywhere else I'd like to be".
In 2011 she was chosen to replace Sue MacGregor
Sue MacGregor
Susan Katriona MacGregor CBE is a British writer and broadcaster.-Early life:Her parents were Scottish and emigrated to South Africa where she was brought up. Her father was a doctor, a neurologist who was in the British 14th Army in Burma in the Royal Army Medical Corps...
as presenter of the Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
book programme A Good Read
A Good Read
A Good Read is one of BBC Radio 4's longest running programmes where two guests join the main presenter to choose and discuss their favourite book. Sue MacGregor stepped down in 2010 as the programme's longest serving presenter...
.
Gilbert has introduced the World Service arts documentary series Close Up. In 2008 she stood in as presenter of the arts programme The Ticket. She previously presented the World Service's dedicated book programme The Word
The Word (radio)
The Word was a weekly half-hour radio programme on the BBC World Service about books and writers. Its final edition was in October 2008. Once a month its slot was taken over by World Book Club in which listeners sent in questions to a famous writer. Both programmes were presented by Harriett Gilbert...
. Besides this she has presented arts programmes for BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
, BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
and BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
television.
Writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen
Michael Rosen
Michael Wayne Rosen is a broadcaster, children's novelist and poet and the author of 140 books. He was appointed as the fifth Children's Laureate in June 2007, succeeding Jacqueline Wilson, and held this honour until 2009....
called her "one of the very best presenters of arts programmes on radio or TV". The Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
said of her, "the splendid Harriett Gilbert [...] painfully shows up certain would-be arty Radio 4 colleagues".
She is the author of six novels, including Hotels With Empty Rooms and The Riding Mistress. Her non-fiction books include A Women's History of Sex and The Sexual Imagination from Acker
Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She was strongly influenced by the Black Mountain School, William S...
to Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
. She scripted the short animated film The Stain (1991) viewable at the Internet Archive.
Although she has not published a novel since 1983 she hopes to return to writing, possibly using her time at City University as inspiration.
At the 2009 Bath Literature Festival
Bath Literature Festival
The Bath Literature Festival held annually in Bath, Somerset, England, has become an important date in the national literary calendar, playing host to an array of journalists, novelists, poets, politicians, actors, comedians, writers and biographers....
, she and the novelist Michèle Roberts
Michèle Roberts
Michèle Brigitte Roberts is a British writer, novelist and poet. Roberts was the daughter of a French Catholic teacher mother and English Protestant father ; she has dual UK-France nationality.-Early life:She was raised in Edgware, Middlesex and educated at a convent, expecting to become a nun,...
discussed "Guilty Pleasures" (Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
and Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer was a British historical romance and detective fiction novelist. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. In 1925 Heyer married George Ronald Rougier, a mining engineer...
) as well as the enduring appeal of cross-dressing, duelling, and driving Daimlers.