I asked Andrea Leadsom to give me three positive benefits of Brexit. She couldn’t do it
Rachel Cooke
9,020 posts
Observer writer, Statesman TV critic. Her Brilliant Career; Kitchen Person; Virago Book of Friendship (Norton US 2025). Insta @msrachelcooke Bsky @msrachelcooke
London
Joined July 2013
- I’ve been a newspaper journalist for more than 30 years, and now I’ve done a Coronation, and I was happy and proud to be asked, and I’m with Nick Cave - let us not be too grouchy
- If you read my piece about Malta on Sunday, here’s the latest development. This is happening RIGHT NOW
- I was going to leave the men to it. But f*** it. Here’s a long interview with Mart by me, from 2006
- She was very clever, very kind and very unusual, and somehow this service captured all of it
- Oh, David Lodge! He meant so much to me as a teenager: the funniest, the beadiest, the truest. Here's an interview I did with him at home in Brum (aka Rummidge) in 2008
- What a tribute to Jane Bown @observer that it was her picture the Palace released yesterday. She was 81 when she took it. Jane was the best
- Well done everyone! Always good to destroy things others love and really need!Baillie Gifford cancels all remaining sponsorships of literary festivals theguardian.com/books/article/…
- Claire Tomalin is 90 today. Here’s an old interview by me with her, about which I have very tender feelings. She is amazing. Happy birthday to her
- This is just quietly to say: a series of essays I've written for @BBCRadio3 begins on Easter Monday, 2245, and runs all week. It's called The Odd Woman, and celebrates single women in all their guises: spinsters, career girls, divorcees, widows and (my favourite) maiden aunts
- I reviewed this very long and plaintive book as best I could






