Derek Cooper

Education

He was educated at Raynes Park County Grammar School, Portree High School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he read English.

Career

After World World War II service with the Royal Navy he was with Radio Malaya until 1960. After that he wrote for, among others, The Listener, The Observer, Homes & Gardens and Saga Magazine. He was appointed Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1997 and in 1999 he was awarded an Honorary

Doctor of Literature by Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh.

He conceived the idea of British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4’s weekly culinary programme The Food Programme, which was first broadcast in 1979. Cooper presented Prime Minister on Radio 4, and his voice-over work included items on Tomorrow"s World and early editions of World in Action.

He was diagnosed as suffering from Parkinson"s disease in 1995. The Derek Cooper Award for Campaigning and Investigative Food Writing or Broadcasting is given out by the Guild of Food Writers.

Achievements

• He was a founder member, first Chairman and first President of the Guild of Food Writers. In 2001, the year he retired from The Food Programme, he won a Sony Radio Academy Special Award for "his pioneering work as one of the first journalists to take the subject of food seriously".