Patrick Oliver Cockburn is a journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times since 1979 and, from 1990, The Independent.
19 Facts About Patrick Cockburn
2.
Patrick Cockburn has worked as a correspondent in Moscow and Washington and is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books.
3.
Patrick Cockburn has written three books on Iraq's recent history.
4.
Patrick Cockburn won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009, Foreign Commentator of the Year, Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year, Foreign Reporter of the Year.
5.
Patrick Cockburn's parents were the well-known socialist author and journalist Claud Cockburn and Patricia Byron, author of the book Figure of Eight.
6.
Patrick Cockburn was educated at Trinity College, Glenalmond, an independent school in Perthshire, and then Trinity College, Oxford.
7.
Patrick Cockburn was a research student at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queens University Belfast, from 1972 to 1975.
8.
Patrick Cockburn is a descendant of Sir George Patrick Cockburn, a British commander during the Burning of Washington.
9.
Patrick Cockburn began his career in 1979 shortly after leaving his PhD in Irish History at Queen's University Belfast due to the violence of the troubles that he began in 1972.
10.
Patrick Cockburn worked for the Financial Times as its Middle East correspondent until 1990, when he left and joined The Independent to cover the Gulf War.
11.
Patrick Cockburn befriended Robert Fisk in Belfast and the two remained in contact until Fisk's death in October 2020.
12.
Patrick Cockburn's book is critical of the invasion as well as the Salafi fundamentalists who comprised much of the insurgency.
13.
Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising, which has been translated into nine languages, and The Rise of Islamic State: Isis and the New Sunni Revolution.
14.
Patrick Cockburn has published a collection of essays on the Soviet Union, titled Getting Russia Wrong: The End of Kremlinology.
15.
Patrick Cockburn co-wrote the book Henry's Demons with his son, Henry, which explains their coming to terms with the latter's diagnosis with schizophrenia.
16.
Patrick Cockburn writes for CounterPunch and the London Review of Books.
17.
Patrick Cockburn was criticised by Idrees Ahmad for an apparent claim made in his 2015 book The Rise of Islamic State about the Adra massacre of Alawites and Christians during the Syrian Civil War.
18.
Ahmad wrote that in the book Patrick Cockburn was apparently claiming to be a witness to the massacre and that this claim disagreed with Patrick Cockburn's reportage at the time, in which he stated he learned of the killings via "a Syrian [Assad regime] soldier who gave his name as Abu Ali".
19.
Patrick Cockburn said that he had not claimed to be a witness to the massacre.