Richard Cohen

Richard Cohen is the author of four well-received books of cultural history, By The Sword (a history of swordplay), Chasing The Sun (a history of our star), and How to Write Like Tolstoy, A Journey into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers. His latest book, The History Makers, is due out from Random House this November. Of it, Hilary Mantel has written: “What a brilliant achievement!  Like all Richard Cohen’s writing, The History-Makers opens a dialogue with the reader – grave and witty, suave yet pointed — erudite yet engaging and full of energy. It has huge scope, but never forfeits the telling detail. It is scholarly, lively, quotable, up-to-date and fun.”

In 2019 Academica Press published The Presence of the Past: Essays on Memory, Conflict, and Reconstruction, for which Richard contributed an essay, “But Just Remember This,” on history and memory. From 2015 to 2020, he has been the tour expert for New York Times Journeys, lecturing on the World War I battlefields of France and Belgium, the Galapagos Islands, and (this coming July) the Scottish Highlands, among other subjects. He is a former publishing director of Hutchinson and Hodder & Stoughton, and the founder of Richard Cohen Books, as well as former director of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. He has edited books by such authors as John Keegan, Madeleine Albright, John le Carré, Simon Winchester, Sebastian Faulks, Richard Holmes, and Hilary Spurling. 

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in Britain, he is also a writer-in-residence in the New York Public Library’s Frederick Lewis Allen Room, and for the last eight years has been a member of the editorial board of Lapham’s Quarterly. He was for seven years visiting professor in creative writing at the University of Kingston-upon-Thames.  He has written for most UK quality newspapers as well as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He was selected for the British Olympic fencing team in 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1984.  He lives in New York City with his wife, the literary agent Kathy Robbins.

Photo credit: Christopher Dickey