Remembering Rachel Cooke
We are sad to announce the death of beloved RCW client Rachel Cooke, who passed away on 14th November 2025, aged 56.
Her agent, Peter Straus, writes:
"I first met Rachel after I had read several of her extraordinary pieces in The Observer. It was clear she had a fierce and uncompromising intelligence and wrote elegantly with wit and grace. Her terrific enthusiasm and insatiable curiosity for all kinds of writing, from graphic novels to poetry became ever more evident the more I knew her. Her own books reveal her wide-ranging interests and versatility: Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties through Kitchen Person: Notes on Cooking & Eating to The Virago Book of Friendship. This last was in part conceived as a tribute to her great friend Carmen Callil, the publisher and founder of Virago. Carmen always relished Rachel’s writing and said that Rachel’s pieces were always the first she would turn to in any paper or magazine. Rachel was brave, she was passionate, an excellent reader and critic and a wonderful writer. I will miss her as a writer and as a friend."
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