Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE (21 July 1934 – 27 November 2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, comedian and physician.

After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.

As a writer and presenter of more than a dozen BBC documentaries, Miller became a television personality and public intellectual in Britain and the United States.

In 1953, before leaving secondary school, he performed comedy several times on the BBC radio programme Under Twenty Parade.

[citation needed] While studying medicine, Miller was involved in the Cambridge Footlights, appearing in the revues Out of the Blue (1954) and Between the Lines (1955).

Miller helped to write and produce the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1960.

Miller quit the show shortly after its move from London to Broadway in 1962, and took over as editor and presenter of the BBC's arts programme Monitor in 1965.

The Monitor appointment arose because Miller had approached Huw Wheldon about taking up a place on the BBC's director training course.

It was the first play produced at the American Place Theatre and starred Frank Langella, Roscoe Lee Brown, and Lester Rawlins.

[citation needed] Miller wrote and presented the BBC television series, and accompanying book, States of Mind in 1983 and the same year directed Roger Daltrey as Macheath, the outlaw hero of the BBC's production of John Gay's 1728 ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera.

[citation needed] In 1990, Miller wrote and presented a joint BBC/Canadian production titled, Born Talking: A Personal Inquiry into Language.

He appeared at the Royal Society of the Arts in London discussing humour (4 July 2007) and at the British Library on religion (3 September 2007).

[citation needed] In January 2009, after a break of 12 years, Miller returned to the English National Opera to direct his own production of La bohème, notable for its 1930s setting.

[22][23] His ashes were interred on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery, opposite the grave of Karl Marx, on 21 October 2022.

[24] Over four decades, Miller has directed more than 50 operas in cities including London, New York, Florence, Milan, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Valencia and Tokyo.