Alan Cochrane is Scottish editor and columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was born in Dundee and began work as a journalist with the DC Thomson newspaper group. In London he covered politics for, variously, the Daily Express, the Sunday Telegraph, the Mail on Sunday – where he was political editor and assistant editor under Stewart Steven – and the Sunday Express. He returned to Scotland in 1994 as editor of the Scottish Daily Express and was subsequently deputy editor of Scotland on Sunday. He covered the years leading up to the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament for The Scotsman and, latterly, the Daily Telegraph, for which he ran the coverage of the independence referendum. He has four children and lives in Edinburgh
with his wife and two youngest daughters.