Alexander Cockburn nació el 6 de junio de 1941 en Reino Unido. Estuvo casado con Emma Tennant y Katherine Kilgore. Murió el 21 de julio de 2012 en Hesse, Alemania.
He was awarded the A.M. (Member of the Order of Australia) in the 1995 Queen's New Years Honours List for his services to journalism and to literature.
[on Christopher Hitchens] He courted the label 'contrarian,' but if the word is to have any muscle, it surely must imply the expression of dangerous opinions. Hitchens never wrote anything truly discommoding to respectable opinion and if he had he would never have enjoyed so long a billet at Vanity Fair.