Andrew Cockburn - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

Born in London in 1947, Cockburn grew up in County Cork, Ireland. His father was socialist author and journalist Claud Cockburn. His mother, Patricia Evangeline Anne (née Arbuthnot), was the granddaughter of British colonial administrator Henry Arthur Blake and British politician George Arbuthnot; she had written an autobiography, Figure of Eight. Cockburn was educated at Glenalmond College, Perthshire, and Worcester College, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire.

Cockburn has two brothers, Alexander Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, who are also journalists, and two half-sisters. One sister, Sarah, was best known as the mystery writer Sarah Caudwell. The other sister, Claudia, worked on disability and married Michael Flanders, half of the well-known performance double-act: Flanders and Swann; the two children of this marriage are the journalists Laura Flanders and Stephanie Flanders, his half-nieces.

He married Leslie Corkhill Redlich in San Francisco in 1977 and together they have three children, Chloe Frances Cockburn (April 3, 1979), The O.C. and House M.D. actress Olivia Wilde (née Olivia Jane Cockburn) and Charles Philip Cockburn (January 31, 1993). The Cockburns are distantly "related by cousinly marriages" to Sir George Cockburn, 10th Baronet, who ordered the Burning of Washington in 1814.