Born in Bristol, he was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and trained at Glyndebourne as assistant to Carl Ebert,[2] and then at the York Theatre Royal and BBC television, made his directing debut with Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges for the Sadler's Wells company in 1965.
[4] During his tenure he worked with designers including David Hockney, Sir Hugh Casson, Michael Annals and William Dudley.
[2] The critic Rodney Milnes singles out for mention Cox's Glyndbourne productions of Richard Strauss operas: Ariadne auf Naxos (1971), Capriccio (1973), Intermezzo (1974), Die schweigsame Frau (1977), Der Rosenkavalier (1980) and Arabella (1984).
Cox succeeded Peter Ebert as general administrator and artistic director of Scottish Opera in 1981, holding the post until 1986.
Milnes mentions in particular Daphne in Munich, Don Carlos in San Francisco, Un ballo in maschera in Sydney and Patience, one of the English National Opera's longest-running successes.