On Sat, 28 Apr 2007, James Heartfield wrote:
> Related to Claud Cockburn, I wonder? ... The Story of the WEEK by Patricia
> Cockburn is quite fantastic.
As Doug said, Claud was his dad -- and Patricia was his mom.
His brother Patrick, the incredibly brave and one of the most intelligent reporters covering Iraq, wrote a wonderful memoir about the family last year entitled the _The Broken Boy_, the title referring to how he and his brother Andrew caught polio in Ireland in 1956, the year Salk's vaccine was first being rolled out in bulk. It's well-written, heartbreaking and fascinating. And it shows clears within two pages how much he diverges from the mainstream of the family as it flows from Claud through Alex: he is unbelievably generous to people -- and he footnotes even his childhood recollections. Boy I wish that would catch on among memoir writers.
But after he gets over the heartbreaking part, and even during, it's full of very funny anecdotes, as well as great analysis, of his father's theory and practice of guerrilla journalism (in which you can clearly see all of Alex's principles, practices and problems preceding him). And it includes a dozen pages on The Week, Private Eye and other of Claud's escapades. What an amazingly colorful bunch this family was, every one of them. And when what they write is good, boy is it good.
Michael