Rachel Cooke, a journalist with the Observer for 25 years who "reviewed books, interviewed celebrities, politicians and writers, championed graphic novels, wrote a weekly TV column for the New Statesman, and also published three books," died November 14, the Bookseller reported. She was 56
Lennie Goodings, chair of Virago, which published her most recent title, The Virago Book of Friendship (2024), said, "I remember, most poignantly now, that it was inspired by the death of her great friend, Carmen Callil, Virago's founder. It will be published in America in December by Norton as The Book of Women's Friendships. Her first book, Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties [2013], was published by us too and she also collected her beguiling Observer pieces in Kitchen Person: Notes on Cooking & Eating [2023] , published by Juliet Annan [publishing director] at Weidenfeld.... All three of her wonderful books reflect the passions and the wit of a great writer."
Goodings added that Cooke's "journalism, her books and her love for her beloved husband, the writer Anthony Quinn, lit up the world for her--and for us. Witty and inspiring, her knowledge and sheer appetite for life was shared with millions of readers."
After editing the student newspaper Cherwell during her final year at Oxford University's Keble College, she started working as part of a Sunday Times trainee initiative, "and rapidly established herself as a hard worker who grasped that journalism could also be fun," the Observer wrote, adding that when she was offered work on the paper's review section in 2001, she agreed. Beginning in 2009, she wrote a column on food, as well as television reviews for the New Statesman, interviews for Esquire, and other Observer work. In 2006 she was named Interviewer of the Year at the British Press Awards.
In a tribute, Tim Adams, editor of the Observer's New Review, noted: "Rachel could not only do everything as a journalist--fearless and funny commentary, ego-piercing interviews, campaigning social reporting, erudite and blistering book reviews, taste-making food writing, courageous foreign reportage--she could invariably do it all better, and quicker, than anybody else."
Jane Ferguson, a former editor of the New Review, said Cooke had "intellectual ballast, lightly worn, authority, bite, humor and positively fizzed with ideas.... Despite filing over 100,000 words annually over decades, she somehow still had time to read and see everything."
Journalist Sonia Sodha, a former colleague of Cooke's at the Observer, said: "I feel so lucky to have had Rachel Cooke as a friend and colleague in recent years." Sodha described Cooke as "funny, kind, clever, a truly exceptional writer" who was a "loyal sister-in-arms" to feminist colleagues.