Overview
- Cooke died on Friday after a cancer diagnosis earlier this year, aged 56.
- She spent 25 years at the Observer, where editors described her as “the backbone of the paper.”
- New Review editor Tim Adams praised her mastery of commentary, interviews, social reporting, reviews, food writing and foreign reportage, delivered with remarkable speed.
- Former New Review editor Jane Ferguson highlighted her “intellectual ballast” and constant flow of ideas, with further tributes from Sonia Sodha and Simon Hattenstone.
- Born in Sheffield with part of her childhood in Jaffa, she studied at Oxford, began at the Sunday Times, wrote for the New Statesman, published the 2023 collection Kitchen Person, and is survived by her husband, writer Anthony Quinn.