Sir Edward Tyas Cook (12 May 1857 – 30 September 1919) was an English journalist, biographer, and man of letters.

[2] In August 1888, Cook was recruited by his friend Alfred Milner for a part-time position with the Liberal newspaper the Pall Mall Gazette, then under the editorship of John Morley.

As editor Cook carried forward many of the positions Stead advocated, such as Liberal Imperialism and a strong navy, but he brought in a younger group of writers as contributors.

The start of Boer War in 1899 brought Cook directly into conflict with the Little Englander wing of the Liberal Party.

When David Lloyd George organised a consortium of Liberal businessmen to purchase the Daily News in 1901, he declared that the paper would adopt a stance of neutrality on the war.

[2] A modern biographer of Nightingale comments that Cook’s work remains, nearly a century after it was written, “the unsurpassed account” of her public life.

He quickly produced a short pamphlet, How Britain Strove for Peace, which put the animus for starting the conflict onto Germany.

Created to direct press coverage of the war, its function evolved with the conflict, yet Cook was greatly respected by his contemporaries for performing a difficult job with wisdom and devotion.