Leonard Cohen

Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal in 1934 into a prominent Jewish family. He first won acclaim as a writer, publishing the poetry collection Let Us Compare Mythologies in 1956 and the novels The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers, much of the latter written on the Greek island of Hydra. Only in his thirties did he turn to songwriting, releasing Songs of Leonard Cohen in 1967.

Over five decades he built a songbook of rare depth, including Suzanne, Bird on the Wire, Famous Blue Raincoat, and Hallelujah, a 1984 song that grew slowly into one of the most performed compositions of modern times. In the 1990s he withdrew to the Mount Baldy Zen Center in California, where he was ordained a Buddhist monk, before returning to recording and, in 2008, to a triumphant late-career world tour.

Cohen kept writing until the very end, releasing the acclaimed album You Want It Darker just weeks before his death in Los Angeles in November 2016, aged 82. He received the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His unhurried baritone and exacting verses continue to console and challenge listeners, securing his place among the century's essential poets.