Valerie Grove is a British journalist and writer, for many years a feature writer, interviewer and columnist for The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

newspaper.

After graduating from Girton College, Cambridge

Girton College, Cambridge

Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. It was England's first residential women's college, established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon. The full college status was only received in 1948 and marked the official admittance of women to the...

, she joined the London Evening Standard

Evening Standard

The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

in 1968, eventually becoming that newspaper's literary editor.

She has published biographies of writers Dodie Smith

Dodie Smith

Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith was an English novelist and playwright. Smith is best known for her novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Her other works include I Capture the Castle and The Starlight Barking....

 (1996), Laurie Lee

Laurie Lee

Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, and went to Marling School, Gloucestershire. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie , As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and...

 (1999) and John Mortimer

John Mortimer

Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...

 (2007). So Much To Tell, a biography of the children's book editor Kaye Webb

Kaye Webb

Kaye Webb was a British journalist and publisher. She was editor of Puffin Books between 1961 and 1979, and in 1967 founded the Puffin Club, which she ran until 1981. As a journalist she worked on publications including Picture Post, Lilliput and the News Chronicle, and later edited the Young...

, was published in May 2010.

Valerie Grove is married to Trevor Grove (a former editor of The Sunday Telegraph) and lives in London.