Brian Cohen

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March 29, 2020

The following was sent by Jo Tulloch, who spoke at Brian's funeral.

From Jo Tulloch 27 March 2020

One morning Brian Cohen, completely naked, flung open the shutters at his bedroom window to find a mob below hailing him as the Messiah. His mother had... moreThe following was sent by Jo Tulloch, who spoke at Brian's funeral.

From Jo Tulloch 27 March 2020

One morning Brian Cohen, completely naked, flung open the shutters at his bedroom window to find a mob below hailing him as the Messiah. His mother had something to say about that. “He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy”, she told the disappointed crowd.

So begins a famous film in which our Brian will forever be immortalised. When I watched it again recently, I recalled that it didn’t do him justice, by a long way – he was so much more handsome, intelligent and funny than his namesake!

Brian was my first enduring friend in Britain. We met at the inaugural meeting of the London Free School in early 1966, a time so full of optimism that as youth we felt we could do anything.

As a recent arrival from Montreal, I found London a challenging place, where making real friends was difficult. But, it was also exciting to live in Notting Hill, which seemed to be at the centre of social change. A notice board at work led me initially to a series of lectures on anti-psychiatry by Ronald Laing and his associates; and from there, on to the London Free School, a community action / adult education project in North Kensington inspired by American free universities, by Saul Alinsky and by Paulo Freire.

The basic idea was that “the community” in North Kensington was a rich organism, full of people who had knowledge and skills: the aim of the London Free School was to find them and put them together with people who had other skills, in a kind of “knowledge exchange”. But the LFS was, in reality, a short-lived, anarchic organisation run by a cabal of mostly shallow young men, and it lasted only a short time before many of its leading lights moved on to more lucrative pasttimes. Brian seemed to be the only person with a genuine idealism, as well as an awareness of the political causes of poverty, who was willing to roll up his sleeves and do some work in the community.

So Brian and I teamed up and went out knocking on doors, looking for people with skills willing to share them. Brian was very good at this, and people found it easy to talk to him. On one of these occasions, we knocked on the door of a woman called Rhaune Laslett, a controversial figure who is often (wrongly) credited with initiating the Notting Hill Carnival. I do believe Brian came to regret having discovered her!

In time, Brian became a lifelong friend. As a Canadian, I didn’t know how to navigate the snobbery and hidden assumptions of the English class system and the disapproval of foreigners. Having an unsnobbish English friend, and Jewish to boot, was a kind of lifeline. Brian introduced me to another London, to his sister Ruth and cousins, and to a more comfortable way of being in this country. His honesty, his staunch commitment to social justice, and his genuine kindness were deep and true. I was also impressed, as someone who myself had to deal with anti-semitism as a child, by Brian’s fascist-bashing past: as I understand, in the 1950s Brian – together with his cousins and friends – used to go out looking for fascists in the streets; and the police, many of whom had served in the War, tended to turn a blind eye.

I was delighted when Brian met Barbara, a beautiful, brilliant and accomplished woman who suited him well. Together, they and their children became my family in Britain, and over the decades their steadfast kindness, and their generosity, have been a constant reassurance and saved my bacon more than once! Brian was also the onetime tutor, and later colleague, of my former husband Courtney at Goldsmith’s; though they didn’t always see eye-to-eye, Brian was very forebearing and didn’t allow our friendship to suffer.

Brian was a fine, honorable, and very dear man, who – by his own reckoning – had a brilliant life. May we all be so lucky! I’ll finish with a quote from the poet Edna St Vincent Millay:

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world." less

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March 4, 2020

From Nick Deakin and Lucy Gaster
February 13th 2020

Dear Barbara, Rachel and Hilary

We are terribly sad to hear about Brian’s death and feel lucky that we were able to see him last week. It was lovely to know that he was happy that we came, and... more

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March 4, 2020

Paul Ward spoke at Brian's funeral

Val & I were coming up to see Brian this week but he beat us to it and left town. We are very sad.

Brian and I met on Social Administration course in the early 60’s. We arrived at university... morePaul Ward spoke at Brian's funeral

Val & I were coming up to see Brian this week but he beat us to it and left town. We are very sad.

Brian and I met on Social Administration course in the early 60’s. We arrived at university a little late as we had both lost a couple of years doing national service. For us LSE was a wonderful experience where we could live the life of intellectuals as Brian would say. He was not materialistic and loved books and ideas.
One memorable meeting with Brian was travelling on the northern line with Val one day. A man was ranting on about how matriarchy was ruining his life. I glanced up and there was Brian grinning across the carriage from me. We both liked women.
We saw a lot of each other through my time at LSE and Brian eventually asked Val and I for a meal. We had cauliflower boiled, potatoes, and cod no peas or other vegetables just all white. As you can imagine we never let him forget this. His repertoire improved in later years and he even grew some fruit and veg in his garden.
Many of you must know that Brian worked for the Institute of Race Relations and did a fantastic job of researching and writing three chapters of the book Colour and Citizenship. He recommended me for some work on the book while I was waiting to start a job. It was a great place work just off Regents Street. The most memorable incident during that time was seeing John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Whimpey’s when we went for our morning coffee one day. It was a time when we had young families and thought we could anything.
He visited us with Barbara, Rachael, and Hilary when we first moved to Devon after we bought a small farm. We have a photo of Brian posing in front a sapling we had planted pretending he was a muscle man. It was just his height then but grew hugely and is now at the end of it’s life. Sometimes they stayed at a lovely house at East Prawle where we visited and had picnics on the be beach.
Brian was very generous to our daughter Helen when she first went to university renting her his basement flat in Torriano Avenue. She said the most helpful part of experience living in Brian’s flat was that it reinforced her conviction that tidying and cleaning were a waste of time.
When I think my mate Brian I think of a kind intelligent and funny man with great integrity. Val and I loved and appreciated him and we will miss him so much. less

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February 22, 2020

From Brian's oldest cousin

I was all of 5 months old when Brian was born so obviously I knew him most of my life - and sadly we're all here because I knew him all of his. But I didn't really become aware of him until we were about 6 or 7 when we visited... more

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February 21, 2020

My speech at Brian's funeral

Hello, I’m Barbara and Yes, I am a California girl. For Brian a new cultural experience.
I came to London for one year and…. I’m still here. And Brian was the reason I stayed.
I was a Social Admin student at LSE in... moreMy speech at Brian's funeral

Hello, I’m Barbara and Yes, I am a California girl. For Brian a new cultural experience.
I came to London for one year and…. I’m still here. And Brian was the reason I stayed.
I was a Social Admin student at LSE in autumn 1966 when I climbed onto a coach to travel to Cliftonville for a weekend school. On the coach I met a friendly girl with long dark hair called Ruth. Later that day Ruth introduced me to her brother Brian, who was with other research assistants. It was not love at first sight. Months later, when I was studying for exams in the sun in Lincoln’s Inn Fields Brian came along and said, why not come rowing in Regents Park? And so we did. We agreed to go to Kew Gardens the next Sunday, I would catch the overground at Canonbury and he would catch the same train at West Hampstead. Except it poured with rain, so we didn’t go to Kew, we went to the cinema. And we never ever went to Kew Gardens together.
This was also a cultural experience for me. That Brian was so totally a Londoner fascinated me. He knew not only which bus or which train to take, but also where on the platform to stand depending on where you would be getting off…. Swoon .
By 1968 I loved Brian and I was here to stay. He moved into the flat I was sharing with Liz (who sends love from Greece today) and then we moved to a flat in Primrose Hill.
Like a comic opera I put letters in wrong envelopes; very soon I was subjected to a barrage of letters from my parents appalled that their child (then age 28) was living in sin. On an inspection visit my mother met Brian’s warm and welcoming family, but nevertheless concluded that her daughter should be saved from a life in London. Poor Brian, I told him the only way to stop this was to get married, and so we did in 1969. Our Jewish wedding was a cultural experience for all of our friends. My Californian parents, for whom no drinks could be served without ice, arrived at the synagogue clutching an almost empty plastic bag, since the ice from their hotel had dripped away while they waited for a taxi.
Brian and I went to Los Angeles later that year for our American wedding party. My father, an ardent American football fan boasted that as a treat for Brian he had tickets for an important game. A friend asked Brian if he would be sitting on the 50 yard line (the best seats) When Brian asked “What’s that?” my friend called my father over and said “Your son-in-law doesn’t even know what the 50 yard line is” … another person overheard and, to reduce the shock said “but at least he’s Jewish”.
Over the years my father never really understood Brian. How could you be a university lecturer and live in an old house with only one bathroom and no washing machine or dishwasher? My mother gradually did catch on that Brian was a very intelligent, honest, decent, kind and caring man who treated his parents with respect and his two daughters with overflowing love and affection.
Which brings me to our daughters. I did not have a career. I had a job that helped us pay our way. Despite my Wellesley education (for the …… women) once I was married I wanted to have a family. This had not been Brian’s plan. Somehow he must have agreed, and when Rachel was born in 1971 his life was instantly, permanently, changed. All the more so when Hilary was born 18 months later.
When Hilary was 3 I began to train as a solicitor. Brian was working full-time. When I needed to do full-time training he negotiated to work part-time so he could look after the girls, a choice which in those days clearly harmed his future career prospects. Working part-time, as a teacher of community work, Brian had been looking forward to networking with our neighbours in the nearby launderette, as I had done for many years; he never forgave me for buying us a washing machine !
I am very grateful to Brian for too many things, generous loving, uncountable happy days, widening my knowledge and my horizons. He gave me huge support during the years it took me to qualify and in my first jobs. We didn’t talk about how my new career might affect our relationship. Things went wrong. In 1985 we decided to separate. I moved out. Rachel and Hilary moved back and forth to live with each of us for one, and then, two, weeks at a time. We continued to visit his parents together, we told our mutual friends there were no “sides” to take and they could still invite us both to their parties.
And so, for nearly 35 years we remained separated.
We continued to share many things -- top of the list we shared wonderful beautiful daughters and many of their friends, Brian was a brilliant Dad. For the last 10 years we have also shared wonderful grandsons, he was also a brilliant granddad. We now have Hilary’s husband, Hervé, and Rachel’s partner Simon added to the family we share and love. Brian and I, with R and H have shared decisions about how best to meet Ruth’s changing needs. A truly positive sharing has been the times, as a ‘family’, we have cheered great athletes at the Olympics first in LA in 1984, then in Athens in 2004 and then the London Olympics in 2012.
Brian always refused to come for Christmas lunch but for many years he would come later and always win at Trivial Pursuits.
This often unassuming man had superior knowledge stashed away on nearly every subject you could think of.
While Brian and I have come together for particular occasions, mainly for 35 years we have lived different, separate, lives. We have, however, always felt able to ask each other for help. That we are “family” has rung particularly true over the last weeks, when, aware that he was seriously ill, for the very first time he asked Rachel and Hilary and me for help. They responded brilliantly, unceasingly, and together we made his last weeks as good as they could be.
And IF today, Brian could hear, I’d say “thank you Brian, you’ve been a very fine husband to me, when we were together and in our shared times since we parted.” And, if he could, he would smile, and say “We had some good times didn’t we?”. less

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February 12, 2020

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