Grove was born in
South Shields, England. Her father, William Douglas "Doug" Smith (1916–73), was a cartoonist for the
Shields Gazette and other newspapers. Grove was an undergraduate at
Girton College, Cambridge, from 1965, graduating from
Cambridge University in 1968 with a degree in English. She joined the London
Evening Standard in the year of her graduation, initially working on the "
Londoner's Diary" column, then as a feature writer, eventually becoming the newspaper's literary editor for two spells (1979–81 and 1984–87). She left the
Standard in 1987. After this, she wrote for
The Sunday Times (1987–91) and
The Times (1992–2014). Grove's book
The Compleat Woman: Marriage, Motherhood, Career – Can She Have it All? appeared in 1987. The volume contains interviews with prominent women of the time, married for at least 25 years and with three or more children. Grove is a biographer of the writers
Dodie Smith (1996),
Laurie Lee (1999) and
John Mortimer (2007). (Her first book
Where I Was Young – Memories of London Childhoods was published in 1976, under her former name.) In 1975, she married
Trevor Grove, == Bibliography ==