Rachel Cooke worked for The Observer and lived in Islington

TRIBUTES have been paid to “funny, witty, charming” Observer writer Rachel Cooke, who lived in Canonbury for two decades.

Ms Cooke died last Friday, aged 56, from ovarian cancer, and is remembered for her brilliant and prolific writing on food, books, TV, theatre, and her astute and piercing interviews.

“She loved it,” her husband Anthony Quinn told the Tribune. “She was a writer right down to her fingertips. She was curious about everything.”

Ms Quinn won interviewer of the year in 2006, and had sat down with several prime ministers, as well as sports stars and TV sensations.

She also wrote three books: Her Brilliant Career, Kitchen Person and The Virago Book of Friendship.

“They are all great and very different. She was proud of them and she was right to be,” said Mr Quinn.

Having grown up in Sheffield, Ms Cooke went to the University of Oxford to study English, and moved to London after graduating to pursue a career in journalism.

In her 30s, she was introduced to her writer husband, who was already living in Islington. Mr Quinn recalled the first time he met Rachel, after they were set up on a date by an editor friend of theirs at Gordon Ramsay’s Boxwood Cafe in Knightsbridge.

“I remember being absolutely delighted to meet her,” he said. “It was the greatest luck of my life.”

Their second date came shortly after, at a restaurant opposite the Almeida Theatre, and the pair moved into their home in Islington in 2005.

“It helped that we were both writers. We knew the joys and the delights, but also the pressures, and we understood each other when we moaned about deadlines.”

Outside of her work, Ms Cooke tended her garden which became her “pride and joy”, planting hawthorn trees, tulips and dahlias.

“She was a bit of an all-rounder. One of those energetic people who make you feel lazy. She was a dynamo, full of energy and passion and she loved to be busy,” Mr Quinn added. “She was incredibly funny and witty and charming, so hard-working, I don’t know anyone who was as industrious as she was.”

Ms Cooke was featured in the pages of this paper for her work defending public libraries as successive government funding cuts forced closures. She warned in 2010 that libraries were “in peril” and that “we must not let them be ransacked”.

“Public libraries were her passion. She was absolutely committed to that. She was horrified at libraries that were closed under a Labour government. It wasn’t just the Conservative government, Labour were to blame for quite a lot of them.

“She was such a passionate reader herself, and she wanted the next generation to be able to read too,” said Mr Quinn.

When not writing or researching or campaigning, meals out at Trullo on Highbury Corner were a favourite for the couple, and Mr Quinn recalled walking almost every street in Islington during lockdown. He said: “We knew Islington so well and we loved being here. There was never any thought that we would live anywhere else.”

Rachel leaves behind two sisters, Emily and Jane, as well as her mother and her brother.