Background
Cohen was born in Birmingham, England.
Cohen was born in Birmingham, England.
He learned to fence while at Downside School, near Bath. While competing as a fencer, he worked for book publishers, editing much of the early work of Jeffrey Archer, and became a publishing director of Hutchinson and Hodder & Stoughton. Since moving to America in 1999, he has edited books by Rudi Giuliani, all five books by Madeleine Albright, David Boies, and the Pulitzer Prizewinning biography of Malcolm X by Manning Marable.
Cohen wrote a history of fencing, By the Sword (2002), with the subtitle A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions. A large-scale history of the Sun, Chasing the Sun, The Epic Story of the Star that Gives Us Life, 2010, Random House and a book about literature and how to write, How To Write Like Tolstoy, May 2016, Random House. He appeared in the James Bond film, Die Another Day (2002).