One of the "greatest broadcasters of all time"

Alistaire Cooke, who died in New York at the age of 95, was hailed by Tony Blair as one of the "greatest broadcasters of all time".

"Cooke was a brave exception to the BBC rule during the war to liberate Iraq," writes Andrew Sullivan in "A 'Cynical Sentimentalist,'" an appreciation of Alistair Cooke, who died yesterday:

He understood what America experienced on 9/11 and he never descended into the mire of knee-jerk anti-Americanism that consumed the BBC in the last few years. He did this as an old-fashioned FDR-style liberal. Beneath his urbanity, you see, there was steel.

Cooke was "a real idol to me in many ways," says Andrew.  "He came to America, as I did, on a Commonwealth Fund fellowship, was absorbed by the theater, as I was, and fell in love with America, as I did, while traveling across the entire country."

For ourselves, coming of age in the seventies and eighties when Cooke burst upon the American television scene with his unique brand of "encyclopaedic knowledge expressed in seemingly casual style," first in "America:  A Personal History of the United States" and then in his introductions to "Masterpiece Theater," he was a revelation.  His presentations were the metaphoric hearth around which the family gathered of a Sunday evening. We agree with William Farish, US ambassador in London, quoted in the London Telegraph obit:

For many Americans, he will always be associated with the best of Britain. He had a poised and effortless manner, a first-class mind and a sincere interest in all things American.

NOTE.  Telegraph requires brief registration.

Comments

[aaron shinbein]

listening to audio book THE AMERICAN HOME FRONT 1941-42 NARRATED BY JOHN BYRNE COOKE. VERY ENJOYABLE and ENLIGHTENING. Thanks.