Category: 91Èȱ¬
Date: 15.10.2004
Printable version
For much of his life, Alistair Cooke's attitude to religion was characteristically
open-minded, albeit built on the solid base of his Methodist upbringing
in Blackpool.
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He loved to quote his mentor, HL Menken, who said: "If I do fetch
up with the twelve apostles, I shall say - 'Gentlemen, I was wrong.'"
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Mind you, the prospect of a weekly Letter from Heaven is so enticing,
it's hard to imagine him getting into much trouble.
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For close on 60 years, Alistair Cooke distilled the essence of American
life and culture and history and politics with exquisite clarity, week
after week.
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The searching but sympathetic light he shone on the wonders and weirdnesses
of his adopted homeland enthralled first a British audience, then later
through the 91Èȱ¬'s World Service, millions of people around the world.
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That I think is part of the reason why 150 people have travelled here
today, not just from America but from as far afield as Lebanon and Australia.
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Alistair, for his pains, received the highest honours his profession
could bestow, and, in 1973, an honorary knighthood from the Queen.
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By the time I met Alistair in the 91Èȱ¬'s New York office in the 1980s,
the Letter from America had made him a broadcasting legend.
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And those 2,869 programmes would be enough of an epitaph for most writers.
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But the Letter was only one of the strings to Alistair's bow.
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He was the Manchester Guardian man, whose despatches stretched from
the foundation of the United Nations to Nixon's election campaign nearly
a quarter of a century later.
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He was the author of a string of books and one blockbuster - America,
a Personal History - which sold nearly two million copies and has just
been reprinted.
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He was, as you've heard, a star of American television and the embodiment
of British culture for an American audience.
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He was a noted public speaker, an enthusiastic jazz pianist, a cartoonist,
and a fanatical golfer, if never perhaps quite as good as he thought
he was.
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Alistair was a friend to philosophers and poets, film stars and, of
course, golfers.
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He was a familiar of Presidents, too, from Roosevelt and Truman through
to Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, without ever being their firm friend.
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He believed that a journalist should keep his distance from his subjects.
As he put it in old age: "I found that I was temperamentally more
suited to the profession of a journalist, that is to say of a curious
onlooker, than to any other."
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Consequently, he was always a hard man to pigeon-hole, as the best
journalists usually are.
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Indeed, he mistrusted dogma and blind faith wherever he found them,
unless of course it involved the science of serving a perfect whisky,
or the beauty of Gabriella Sabatini's forehand.
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He was genuinely taken aback when age and infirmity caught up with
him in his 95th year. He had fully expected to die in harness.
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But in the weeks between his retirement and his death, he had the rare
privilege of hearing and reading the glowing tributes of his professional
life - and enjoying the outpouring of affection from his fans around
the world.
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At the 91Èȱ¬, we are profoundly grateful for his contribution.
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People nowadays talk about institutions having their own DNA. I think
if you looked deep into the genetic code of the 91Èȱ¬ - not just today
but for as long as the 91Èȱ¬ exists - one of the things you would find
at its heart would be the rich, calm, beguiling, wise voice of Alistair
Cooke.
