Life

Cooke was born in Bristol and studied at Jesus College, Oxford

Jesus College, Oxford

Jesus College is one of the colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship Street, Cornmarket Street and Market Street...

 (where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 degree in 1834) and at the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

, where he studied law before being called to the bar by Middle Temple

Middle Temple

The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...

 in 1835. His first book (Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke, written whilst Cooke was an undergraduate), was published in 1835. Further books followed in the succeeding two years: A History of Party from the Rise of the Whig and Tory Factions to the Passing of the Reform Bill and a biography of the first Earl of Shaftesbury. Other publications reflected his employment on a commissions relating to tithes and enclosures. Inside Sebastopol was a description of his visit to the Crimea during the Crimean War

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

 in 1855, and his work for The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

as a special correspondent in 1857 during the Second Opium War

Second Opium War

The Second Opium War, the Second Anglo-Chinese War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a war pitting the British Empire and the Second French Empire against the Qing Dynasty of China, lasting from 1856 to 1860...

led to another successful book. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament on two occasions. After being appointed a commissioner in the copyhold commission in 1862, he fell ill in June 1865 and died of a heart attack on 18 June 1865.