The Americans

When Alistair Cooke died a few years ago at age 95 he was working on his latest Letter from America, a BBC radio series that started in 1946, and followed on from his weekly broadcasts from America during the war. This book of selections covers the decade 1969-79. Its content relates largely but not wholly to American politics, and predictably the latter phases of the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal are covered in a number of the items given here. The words that characterise Cooke's approach are 'civilised' and 'urbane'. He was an Englishman born in Manchester who took up residence in New York in 1937. He was Cambridge-educated and at one time president of the Dramatic Society there, in which position he had the dubious distinction of turning down James Mason at an audition. There is not much in this book about the theatre other than one piece about a visit by president Carter to the opera and a particularly sensitive and appreciative piece about Stephen Sondheim. There were so many references in his broadcasts to his sporting passion of golf that I expected to find a certain amount about it here just on a statistical basis, and so it turns out, but a broadcaster of his skill and taste knows better than to be any club-house bore on air. He was clearly a lover of music, and besides the pieces about Sondheim and Jimmy-at-the-opera I was pleased and relieved to find that the broadcast entitled 'The Duke' related to Duke Ellington and not to John Wayne. There is an affectionate and touching item about Christmas with his family in the snowdrifts of Vermont, there is an ironic and humorous piece on public attitudes to health generally and smoking on particular in which he reads the future wrongly as things have turned out, there is a very amusing one on the geological fault-lines in southern California and the religious prophets of doom, and there are a couple of others specifically about life at the far end of Long Island. Inevitably I suppose, some of the political reportage is much what one would expect from a commentator in one of the weeklies, but there are also thoughtful and informative obituaries on Earl Warren and Dean Acheson. Perhaps nobody ever personified better than Cooke did the BBC's motto 'Nation shall speak unto nation'. Like any of us, he is the product of his background and personal circumstances. He was a comfortably-off New Yorker, he knew who he was and talked like who he was, not like someone from the Bronx or Malibu or Newport, Rhode Island. He speaks the language of common sense and rationality, and he takes no particular political stance, not even one of studied impartiality. He has an obvious affection for and fascination with America, as I do myself, but he is no propagandist or publicist. When his series started as a 13-week trial and then lasted 58 years he had been given only a rough remit and job-description by the BBC. He defined his job for himself, and defined it brilliantly. He was talking to the whole wor