Alistair Cooke
Alistair Cooke
The inspiration behind my Postcard from Bishkek was Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America.
Born on 20th November, 1908, in Salford Lancashire, (in the United Kingdom), Cooke was a journalist and broadcaster. He died at the venerable age of 96 on March 30th, 2004, … but today would have been his 103rd birthday.
I think the first that I became aware of him was when the BBC started broadcasting his award winning 13-part television series America, a Personal History of the United States, in 1973. I came to it late, and only saw the last four or five episodes, but it caught my attention with it’s lavish photography and the relaxed and distinctive tones, littered with “off the cuff” remarks carried a sort freshness and irreverence at the same as authority and knowledge and good dash of “common sense” and “down to earth reality”. It was the work of which he was most proud and summed up his lifelong affection for the land that he had adopted as his home, and his own. Once, he was asked how long it took to make the series and his answer was “40 years”.
It was followed with a large “coffee table book” which was on of the first such “large books” that I ever bought.
Apparently, he had a huge library of books about America and he had them arranged on his bookshelves so that they formed a map of the US – Books about Alaska up in the top left hand corner and those about Florida in the bottom right.
He was famous in the States for a number of other programmes connected with the Arts, particularly the CBS Omnibus programme and as host for the Public Broadcasting Service’s Masterpiece Theatre, but to his fellow Englishmen he will probably be best remembered for Letter from America.
When I was a teacher in North London, I was very much a creature of habit. Every Saturday I would put the weekly wash into the washing machine, get into the car and drive off to the local supermarket to the weekly shop. Having returned home and unloaded the groceries into the cupboard I would take the washing out of the machine and put it out to dry whilst I went off to Rugby or cut the grass. I would then forget about the washing until Sunday morning, when I set up the ironing board, turned on the radio and set about pressing the shirts and sheets. It was a long task and I would listen to Radio 4, the talk programme … there was the news, the Sunday service and the Archers Omnibus … but there was also, in many ways the highlight, the repeat broadcast, (it was a repeat, because the first broadcast was on Friday night), of Letter from America.
Alistair Cooke began broadcasting his “” Letter from America” in 1946. He was a journalist working as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and the BBC. Originally the programme was scheduled to run on the British Home Service, (the forerunner of Radio 4), and around the world on the BBC’s World Service, for just a 13 week season … but it finally came off the air only shortly before his death in 2004, by which time it had become the world’s longest running speech programme. Although he would have a script of sorts, it always seemed as if he was simply rambling … taking his listeners through a maze of thoughts and ideas, but always ending promptly after his 15 minutes were up with a wry comment that summed up his theme like his famous “… and the rest is now history” on the resignation of Richard Nixon.
The programme established itself as a favourite amongst many English speaking people throughout the world – even amongst those who disagreed with him and, sometimes, disagreed with his observations and conclusions about America, its people, history and culture. As a commentator, however, he provided an insight into all things American with reports on global and domestic affairs, as well as individual incidents and impressions. A selection of his articles can still be found on the internet … and several collections of his talks have been published as books.
In fact, when I first came here to Bishkek, I brought three volumes of the collected talks … I still have them and I occasionally dip into them. They are full of poignant in interesting observations on America and American life, interspersed with the occasional reference to his love of Golf and Tennis, (he said that he always rationed himself to just one reference per year).
At that time, the internet was still in it’s infancy and it was some years years before I found that the text of his latest talks were posted on the BBC website … but when I did, reading them became a part of my new weekly routine.
On one occasion I was taken aback when the open words were something like, “Bishkek is not a name that runs off the tongue …”. I sat up and read his account of a Asian summit and why America should take note of what was happening in some far flung country which few people had heard about, yet alone knew where to find it on a map.
A true “renaissance man”, he seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge such that he could take an active role in conversations on any topic, bringing to the discussion a sense of context, seeing the wider picture without losing sight of the details.
Sometimes, as I sit and contemplate another Postcard, I ask myself, “what would Alistair have said?, How would he have tackled the topic?”.
Today, being a Sunday, there’ll be no-one in the office, so I won’t have a cake to commemorate the anniversary – but I might go out and by a bun or two to accompany a toast to the memory of a great man and inspiration.
Bishkek