How Claud Cockburn Invented Guerrilla Journalism

In Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied, Patrick Cockburn explores the fascinating life of his father, journalist Claud Cockburn, whose cutting prose spoke truth to power with charm and wit.

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Review of Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism by Patrick Cockburn (Verso, 2024)

Before Claud Cockburn first entered the Times of London premises in 1929, he had contributed to its Berlin bureau, which gave him some idea of what to expect. But even so, he thought it rather much that the first conversation he overheard was one editor translating Plato’s Phaedo into Chinese, while his colleague recited the relevant passages in Greek from memory. Times editors, he recalled, were typically ensconced behind fat bookstacks, “engaged in writing historical works of their own.”

It was at the desks of Britain’s paper of record that C. K. Scott Moncrieff translated Proust, with the rest of the staff leaving their typewriters to help him find the right phrases — I guess it beat thumping out notices on municipal matters in, say, Cornwall. That’s to say, the Times’ editors were rather more interesting than their typical readers, who, like Ian Fleming’s James Bond, were so soundly conformist they wouldn’t read other papers but the Times.

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