Roger Cohen - Biography

Biography

Roger Cohen was born in London to a Jewish family. His father, Sydney Cohen, a doctor, emigrated from South Africa to England in the 1950s. In the late 1960s, Roger studied at Westminster School, one of Britain's top private schools. He won a scholarship and would have entered College, the scholar's house, but was told a Jew could not attend College or hold his particular scholarship. Instead, he received a different scholarship.

In 1973, Cohen and his friends traveled throughout the Middle East, including Iran and Afghanistan. He drove a Volkswagen Kombi named 'Pigpen' after the late keyboard playing frontman of the Grateful Dead. He attended Balliol College, Oxford University. Cohen graduated with M.A. degrees in History and in French in 1977. He then left that year for Paris to teach English and to write for Paris Metro. He started working for Reuters and the agency transferred him to Brussels.

Cohen's mother, also from South Africa (b. 1929), attempted suicide in London in 1978 and died there in 1999. She was buried in Johannesburg.

Cohen was married to the sculptor Frida Baranek and has four children. The family lived in Brooklyn, New York until 2010, when he moved back to London, where he'd lived in 1980. Before leaving New York in 2010, he was given a farewell party in July by Richard Holbrooke. He wrote a remembrance of Holbrooke five months later after the diplomat's unexpected death.