Francis Claud Cockburn (pronounced Coe-burn or kōbɜːn) (1904–1981) was a renowned radical British journalist, who was controversial for his communist sympathies. He was the cousin of novelist Evelyn Waugh. The son of a British diplomat, Cockburn was born in Peking, China on April 12, 1904. After obtaining a degree from Oxford University, he became a journalist with The Times. He worked as a foreign correspondent in Germany and the United States before resigning in 1933 to start up his own newsletter, The Week. During his spell as a sub-editor on The Times, Cockburn and some colleagues had an unofficial competition to devise the most factually accurate yet most boring headline. Cockburn claimed the honours with "Small Earthquake in Chile. Not many Dead." Under the name Frank Pitcairn, Cockburn also contributed to the British communist newspaper the Daily Worker. In 1936, Harry Pollitt, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, asked him to cover the Spanish Civil War for the newspaper. When he arrived in Spain, he joined the Fifth Regiment so that he could report the war as an ordinary soldier. While in Spain, he published Reporter in Spain. Cockburn was attacked by George Orwell in his book Homage to Catalonia (1938). Orwell accused Cockburn of being under the control of the Communist Party and was particularly critical of the way Cockburn reported the Barcelona May Days. According to the editor of a volume of his writings on Spain, Claud Cockburn formed a close personal relationship with Mikhail Koltsov, "then the foreign editor of Pravda and at that time, in Cockburn's view, 'the confidant and mouthpiece and direct agent of Stalin in Spain'." Cockburn was a strong opponent of appeasement before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the government banned The Week for his endless criticism. The journal ceased publication shortly after the war. In 1947, Cockburn moved to Ireland but continued to contribute to various newspapers and journals, including a weekly column for The Irish Times. In one of his columns for the Irish Times he memorably stated that wherever there is a stink in international affairs you will find that Henry Kissinger has recently visited [exact quotation required]. Among his novels were The Horses, Ballantyne's Folly, Jericho Road, and Beat the Devil (originally published under the pseudonym James Helvick), which was made into a well-known film directed by John Huston with script credit to Truman Capote (the title was later used by Cockburn's son Alexander for his regular column of that name in The Nation magazine). He also published several other books including Bestseller, an exploration of English popular fiction, Aspects of English History (1957), The Devil's Decade (1973), his history of the 1930s, and Union Power (1976). His first volume of memoirs was published as In Time of Trouble (1956) in the UK and as A Discord of Trumpets in the U.S.. This was followed by Crossing the Line (1958), and A View from the West (1961). Revised, these were published by Penguin as I Claud in 1967. Again revised and shortened, with a new chapter, they were republished as Cockburn Sums Up shortly before he died.
Family
Claud Cockburn was married three times: to Hope Hale Davis, with whom he fathered the late Claudia Flanders (wife of Michael Flanders); to Jean Ross (part model for Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles), with whom he fathered the late Sarah Caudwell Cockburn, author of detective stories; and to Patricia Byron, nee Arbuthnot (who also wrote an autobiography, Figure of Eight), with whom he fathered Alexander, Andrew, and Patrick, all three of whom are also journalists. His granddaughters include RadioNation host Laura Flanders, BBC Newsnight economics editor Stephanie Flanders, and The O.C. actress Olivia Wilde.
