EP1. Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied! With guest Patrick Cockburn

Cassandra Voices Podcast

For 50 years Patrick Cockburn has been practicing the art of journalism with integrity and persistence: a specialist on the Middle East, he has written extensively on wars and political machinations from Beirut to Belfast and Baghdad.

Within books like ‘The Occupation and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession’ (written with his brother Andrew), he has revealed the workings of Arab dictatorships and Western Imperialism and hubris alike. Over the last decade, he has also created a separate, no less distinguished profile as a memoirist: ‘The Broken Boy’ describes his survival of a Polio epidemic in 1950s Cork, while ‘Henry's Demons’, co-authored with his son, immerses the reader into the pain of psychosis. For our conversation with Patrick Cockburn, we sought to sketch out the lives and work of two independent-minded writers: both himself and his father, Claud. Claud’s own 50-year career brought him around the world, from Civil War Spain to Wall Street during the crash of 1929, back to 1930s London, where his newsletter The Week both documented and fought the rise of Fascism. It was only after WW2 that Claud moved to Ireland, where Patrick and his siblings would be born from the 50s onwards.

Making use of unclassified MI5 files, and an abundance of material directly remembered from his late father, Patrick spoke to Cassandra Voices as he was preparing the final manuscript of a new memoir, covering Claud’s life.

Episode Credits:

Host: Luke Sheehan

Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com

Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com