Alistair Cooke: 1908-2004
by Louis Cooke

The American century has ended, and with Alistair Cooke's death, at 95, one of its finest chroniclers has gone as well. For more than 60 years, Cooke made it his task to explain his adopted homeland to the world, as a journalist and TV and radio broadcaster, and it is often said he did more for Anglo-American relations than any number of state ambassadors.

He died only a month after sending his last "Letter From America" — no. 2,689 — in the legendary BBC radio program that will forever be associated with his name. But he became a household name in the United States through TV, as presenter of the groundbreaking arts series "Omnibus" in the 1950s and later "Masterpiece Theater," which began in the 1970s. (He was re-created on "Sesame Street" as Alistair Cookie, presenter of "Monsterpiece Theater.")

His most triumphant TV work, however, was the 13-part series "Alistair Cooke's America," which aired in the United Kingdom in 1972. This personal, perceptive history of the United States was not only elegantly crafted, with spectacular images and beautifully written scripts, but so comprehensive in revealing the fundamentals of American life that a copy was placed in every public library in the US. The accompanying book sold more than 2 million copies.

Cooke's advantage in interpreting American life was that he was not born an American but chose to be one. He was born in Salford, northwest England, in 1908 and emigrated to the United States in 1937 after falling in love with the country five years earlier on a fellowship visit. He took US citizenship in 1941, and his loyalty to the two countries on either side of "the pond," as he called it, was divided — but not in conflict. "I feel at home in both countries," he said. "Britain and the USA are two variations of the same culture at work and play."

He might have felt "at home" in Britain, but he was endlessly fascinated with the United States. His curiosity manifested itself in "Letter From America," the longest running program in radio history. From the first "Letter," recorded in 1946 on a 16-inch acetate disc that was flown to London, until the last, delivered by more immediate methods on Feb. 20, 2004, the formula never changed: Cooke simply talked about whatever interested him for 14 minutes.

He claimed that until he sat down at his typewriter to compose his 2,000 word script he never had any idea as to exactly what it would cover. He did not use notes, preferring instead to rely on personal experiences and his encyclopedic memory. It was "writing for talking," as he put it, retaining the "confusion of normal conversation, the syntactical breakdown." (Much of his work as New York correspondent for the Guardian, a post he held between 1945 and 1972, has a similar chatty, digressive feel.)

The premise sounds foolhardy, but Cooke's familiar, anecdotal manner held the "Letters" together, along with his slow, mellifluous, warm speech. It didn't matter what he was talking about — you felt compelled to listen. Sometimes he was chided by listeners and critics for not being sharp enough, for sitting on the fence and portraying a glossy view of the United States — particularly during the Civil Rights era, when many felt his dispatches were too remote and lacked understanding. But Cooke was defiant in his approach. Responding to one listener's complaint about his idiosyncratic decision to discuss baseball instead of tensions in the Middle East, he said, "In all these talks I have gone along on the original theory that people are permanently curious about how other people live, and that all the politicians and propagandists in the world, working on three shifts a day, cannot forever impose their lives on two people sitting in a room. And they are the only proper audience for a letter. I still feel no embarrassment in maintaining a civil tongue."

Cooke always considered himself a reporter, and while he was never controversial, his storytelling cannot be faulted, especially when the occasion demanded the best from him. He was a disciple of H.L. Mencken, committed to the power of language. The impact of his words was multiplied tenfold from the page to his steady voice. One of his most dramatic "Letters" recounts the 1968 shooting of Robert Kennedy. Cooke was about 10 feet from Kennedy at the time. He turned the experience into devastating prose, recalling how "the button eyes of Ethel Kennedy turned to cinders," how Kennedy looked up from the floor with "the stone face of a child's effigy on a cathedral tomb."

"Letter From America" was Cooke's life-giving passion. He threw himself into other pursuits and pastimes — jazz piano (talented), golf (awful), his beloved San Francisco — but he reserved most of his energy for his weekly talk, especially in his later years as his health began to fail him. The "Letter" belonged to him, and he gave it up very reluctantly. His meandering, often less-than-timely approach was increasingly at odds with today's world of instant, 24-hour news, but the results serve as valuable, insightful documents of more than one American generation.