Who is robin cook

The later is concerned with the recently growing problem of medical terrorism. If I had to do it over again, I would still study medicine. I think of myself more as a doctor who writes, rather than a writer who happens to be a doctor. His books help in teaching people about issues they would normally find uninteresting but the way Cook puts them they grab the attention of his readers. Filmography by Job Trailers and Videos. Hollywood Icons, Then and Now. Share this page:. The Rise of Will Smith.

Around The Web Provided by Taboola. Create a list ». Bestselling authors. I've Got An Autograph! See all related lists ». Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDb page. He was admired by his civil servants for the apparently effortless speed with which he mastered his briefs and his constant hunger for ideas, but he was also a cultured man, as happy to discuss Victorian novelists as the season's racing form. Despite forging a career on the back benches as a quietly devastating critic of foreign policy, tribal loyalty saw him return to the fold to campaign for Tony Blair's re-election in May.

Occasionally given to prickliness, Cook was not always an easy man, but his dry wit and sense of mischief endeared him to friends. He spoke movingly of how marriage to his second wife, his former secretary Gaynor Regan, had changed him, teaching him 'emotional intelligence' and giving him an ability to relate to others' feelings. Born in Bellshill in February , Robin Cook went to school in Aberdeen and Edinburgh before going on to read English literature at Edinburgh University - where he met his first wife, Margaret, a consultant haematologist.

He became an MP in , rising swiftly through the opposition ranks, and when Labour gained power in , was appointed Foreign Secretary, devising the ethical foreign policy that crystallised the optimism of the early New Labour years. His proudest achievement in office, he said, was when Britain intervened to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

After the general election, he was moved abruptly sideways to Leader of the Commons, a job he did not initially want but which became a showcase for his wit - and his tenacious pursuit of House of Lords reform. I remember we had a Christmas night out - it ended up being in about February. To his astonishment, he found himself opposed for the nomination by Tony Benn, who was at that time looking for a seat. Cook prevailed comfortably and became a key player in the Kinnock, Smith and Blair reforms which made Labour electable.

With each frontbench post that he held in opposition, Cook's stock rose. He singlehandedly destroyed John Moore's prospects of becoming Tory leader when, as health spokesman between and , he repeatedly took him apart in debates.

Probably his greatest Commons triumph was in the debate on the Scott Report into arms for Iraq. Famously, Cook had only two hours access to the report before delivering the tour de force in which he described the Tory frontbench as "limpets". Government is more difficult than opposition, and Cook's FCO tenure was not short of its excitements. His involvement in the ending of Serbian domination of Kosovo in was seen as successful.

He was embarrassed by appearing not to have been informed by local diplomats about the Sandline International group of mercenaries in Sierra Leone in , though ultimately took the view that there, the ends justified the means. On the Queen's visit to Pakistan and India in , he had to make it clear that, whatever he may have said privately, he had said nothing publicly about British mediation in the Kashmir dispute. He gained great, if sometimes grudging, respect from the mandarins, but the challenges that he faced were compounded by the highly publicised upheavals in his private life, culminating in the break-up of his first marriage and his subsequent re-marriage to his former secretary, Gaynor Regan.

It is a measure of Cook's competence and prestige, both as a national politician and in his constituency, that he continued to operate effectively and maintain political and public support, in the face of intense and continuing media interest. Out of office, Cook expanded his interests beyond politics. His devotion to horses extended to all aspects of the equine world and not just his well-advertised love of the turf. He wrote widely and well. But he had not abandoned hope of a return to frontline politics.

He was without doubt one of the ablest and most interesting postwar Labour politicians, as well as the most effective parliamentarian of his generation.