Overview

Leading Middle East correspondent surveys the life and work of his father, the groundbreaking radical journalist, Claud Cockburn, and meditates whether journalist can still change the world. Claud started on Fleet Street in the 1930s - where he reported from Berlin and New York, and even interview Al Capone. A communist, he was sent to cover the Spanish Civil War for the Daily Worker, also clashing with George Orwell who depicted him as the Stalinist Frank Pitcairn. Returning to London, he set up The Week, a radical newsletter that set the template for radical journalism, from Punch to Private Eye. Here he argued against appeasement and gained the attention of the secret service. He also lambasted the British establishment, in particular the Cliveden Set. he later became a novelist, one of which became the John Houston film, Beat the Devil. This is the first biography of Cockburn, by his youngest son.

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9781804290743

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Quite simply, the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today -- Seymour Hersh A fine and courageous journalist -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times * one of the best informed on-the-ground journalists -- Sidney Blumenthal

Quite simply, the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today -- Seymour Hersh A fine and courageous journalist -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times * one of the best informed on-the-ground journalists -- Sidney Blumenthal replete with historical interest, boasts rich family portraits and exudes considerable charm -- (praise for <i>Broken Boy</i>) * Daily Mail *

Quite simply, the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today -- Seymour Hersh A fine and courageous journalist -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times * one of the best informed on-the-ground journalists -- Sidney Blumenthal Cockburn's colorful, elegantly written account extols Claud's charisma, courage, and daring....[Cockburn] succeeds in capturing Claud's verve and staunch political principles. * Publishers Weekly * Claud Cockburn was one of the great journalists of the 20th century, an irreverent anti-careerist, steeped in the politics of Central Europe, happiest courting risk ... Patrick [Cockburn] has now written an excellent account of him, supplying much new or buried information -- Andrew Gimson * Conservative Home * A timely intervention -- Laura Flanders * Guardian * Claud is shown as complicated and stubborn while also being a wholly magnetic figure who was dogged in both holding his beliefs and finding the central truth. A ruminative biography that firmly situates the power of independent, on-the-ground journalism. -- Booklist A fascinating book about his father's life, with some excellent insights relevant to journalism today. A great read for all but a compulsory text for any aspiring journalists out there. -- Paul Donovan * Morning Star * Cockburn's life was a scurrilous, subversive but dedicated pursuit of the truth (well, mostly) in defiance of authority, while also having a great deal of fun ... He is in many ways one of the great models of what a journalist should be - curious, nonconformist, sceptical and dogged. -- Peter Hitchens * Daily Mail * Described by Graham Greene as the greatest journalist of the 20th century and attacked by senator Joseph McCarthy as ""one of the most dangerous 'reds' in the world"" ... the remarkable life of Claud Cockburn ... is being told by his son, Patrick, in a book which hails him as the inventor of ""guerrilla journalism"". -- Duncan Campbell * Observer *

Quite simply, the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today -- Seymour Hersh A fine and courageous journalist -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times * one of the best informed on-the-ground journalists -- Sidney Blumenthal Cockburn's colorful, elegantly written account extols Claud's charisma, courage, and daring....[Cockburn] succeeds in capturing Claud's verve and staunch political principles. * Publishers Weekly * Claud Cockburn was one of the great journalists of the 20th century, an irreverent anti-careerist, steeped in the politics of Central Europe, happiest courting risk ... Patrick [Cockburn] has now written an excellent account of him, supplying much new or buried information -- Andrew Gimson * Conservative Home * A timely intervention -- Laura Flanders * Guardian * Claud is shown as complicated and stubborn while also being a wholly magnetic figure who was dogged in both holding his beliefs and finding the central truth. A ruminative biography that firmly situates the power of independent, on-the-ground journalism. -- Booklist A fascinating book about his father's life, with some excellent insights relevant to journalism today. A great read for all but a compulsory text for any aspiring journalists out there. -- Paul Donovan * Morning Star * Cockburn's life was a scurrilous, subversive but dedicated pursuit of the truth (well, mostly) in defiance of authority, while also having a great deal of fun ... He is in many ways one of the great models of what a journalist should be - curious, nonconformist, sceptical and dogged. -- Peter Hitchens * Daily Mail * Described by Graham Greene as the greatest journalist of the 20th century and attacked by senator Joseph McCarthy as ""one of the most dangerous 'reds' in the world"" ... the remarkable life of Claud Cockburn ... is being told by his son, Patrick, in a book which hails him as the inventor of ""guerrilla journalism"". -- Duncan Campbell * Observer * The story of Claud Cockburn and the Week, the deadly little newsletter he set up in 1933, shows that power is not always deaf to truth. -- Neal Ascherson * London Review of Books *

Author Information

Patrick Cockburn is a Middle East correspondent for the Independent and has worked previously for the Financial Times. He has written three books on Iraq's recent history, including the National Book Circle Awards– shortlisted The Occupation and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (with Andrew Cockburn), as well as a memoir, The Broken Boy, and, with his son, a book on schizophrenia, Henry's Demons, which was shortlisted for a Costa Award. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009. More recently he has been awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year in British Journalism Award 2014, and Foreign Reporter of the Year in Press Awards 2014.

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