Geoffrey Cox (journalist)

Sir Geoffrey Sandford Cox, CNZM, CBE (7 April 1910 – 2 April 2008) was a New Zealand-born newspaper and television journalist. He was a former editor and chief executive of ITN and a founder of News at Ten.

Cox was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, the son of a bank manager, and educated at Southland Boys' High School, followed by the University of Otago and then a Rhodes scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford, during 1932-35.

His career in journalism began in 1935 when he joined the News Chronicle. He covered the Spanish Civil War from Madrid, then went to Vienna and Paris for the Daily Express in which he broke the news in 1939 that British troops had arrived in France. He then covered the Winter War from Finland; while critical of the Soviet attack on Finland he foresaw that the Red Army would defeat the Germans.

He enlisted in the New Zealand Army, serving in Crete and North Africa, then was First Secretary at the new New Zealand Embassy in Washington before serving in Italy.

In 1956 he joined ITN, the new commercial TV channel in Britain as News Editor of Independent Television News, and started News at Ten in 1967.

Bibliography

• Defence of Madrid (1937, Victor Gollancz, London) ISBN 1 877372 3 84 (reprinted 2006 review)
• The Red Army Moves (1941, Victor Gollancz, London) (report from Finland)
• The Road to Trieste (1947, Heinemann, London)
• The Race for Trieste (1977, W. Kimber, London) & (1977, Whitcoulls, Christchurch) ISBN 071830375X (revision of The Road to Trieste)
• See It Happen (The Making of ITN) (1983, Bodley Head, London) ISBN 0370309502
• A Tale of Two Battles (1987, W. Kimber, London) ISBN 0718306422 (Greece & Crete, North Africa in World War II)
• Countdown to War (1988, W. Kimber, London) ISBN 0718306740
• Pioneering Television News: a first hand report on a revolution in journalism (c1995, John Libbey, London) ISBN 0861964845
• Eyewitness: A Memoir of Europe in the 1930s (1999, University of Otago, Dunedin) ISBN 1877133701
• A New Zealand Boyhood (2004, Amadines Press, Gloucestershire, England) ISBN 0948640650

References

• Obituary in Dominion Post, 10 April 2008 page B7 (from The Times & NZPA)

Dance of the Peacocks: New Zealanders in exile in the time of Hitler and Mao Tse-Tung by James McNeish (2003, Vintage, Random House, New Zealand) ISBN 1 86941 564 7

External links

• Geoffrey Cox: Photo and article at NZ History website

• Obituary: Times
• Obituary: Telegraph
• Obituary: Guardian
• Obituary: Independent
• Obituary: ITV
• Otago University alumni profile
• Honorary Doctorate from Otago University, 1999
• Defence of Madrid reissued 2007, review
• Major Cox at Trieste (text)