worked for the Observer for 25 years<\/a>, where she was described as \u201cthe backbone of the paper\u201d.<\/p>\nOn a tribute posted on the newspaper\u2019s website, Tim Adams, the editor of New Review, said: \u201cRachel could not only do everything as a journalist \u2013 fearless and funny commentary, ego-piercing interviews, campaigning social reporting, erudite and blistering book reviews, taste-making food writing, courageous foreign reportage \u2013 she could invariably do it all better, and quicker, than anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jane Ferguson, a former editor of New Review, said Cooke had \u201cintellectual ballast, lightly worn, authority, bite, humour and positively fizzed with ideas\u201d. Ferguson added: \u201cDespite filing over 100,000 words annually over decades, she somehow still had time to read and see everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The journalist Sonia Sodha, a former colleague of Cooke\u2019s at the Observer, said: \u201cI feel so lucky to have had Rachel Cooke as a friend and colleague in recent years.\u201d Sodha described Cooke as \u201cfunny, kind, clever, a truly exceptional writer\u201d who was a \u201cloyal sister-in-arms\u201d to feminist colleagues.<\/p>\n
The Guardian interviewer and features writer Simon Hattenstone described Cooke as \u201cthe brilliant Observer journalist who could write wonderfully about anything\u201d adding that she would be \u201chugely, hugely missed\u201d.<\/p>\n
Born in Sheffield in 1969, Cooke was the daughter of a university botany lecturer and a biology teacher. She spent part of her childhood in Jaffa, Israel, attending a Church of Scotland school where Arab and Jewish children were taught together. She studied at the University of Oxford, before beginning her journalism career on the Sunday Times. She also wrote a television column for the New Statesman.<\/p>\n
As part of her role at the Observer, Cooke wrote a monthly food column. In 2023, she published Kitchen Person, a collection of her culinary writing, inspired in part by her grandmother, a working-class woman from Sunderland who was \u201ctouched with a kind of genius in the kitchen\u201d.<\/p>\n
Adams said Cooke had \u201can emotional connection to lunch and dinner\u201d throughout her life. He added: \u201cShe would invariably roll her eyes at any mention of diets or dry Januarys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cooke is survived by her husband, the writer Anthony Quinn, with whom she lived in Islington, north London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tributes have been paid to the journalist and critic Rachel Cooke after her death from cancer. Cooke, 56,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":382344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[99,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-382343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-israel","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115557795452029412","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}