What makes him tick

By Nick Clarke, presenter of BBC Radio 4's 'The World at One,' and author of a biography of Alistair Cooke.

Rather like the Queen, the Letter from America has an official birthday - March 24th 1946, the day of the first broadcast. But the date is misleading.

The genesis of the idea goes back to the year 1936 when the American Network NBC invited him to do a weekly broadcast of reflections on British life. It was called London Letter. Cooke himself then emigrated to the United States in 1937, and immediately started badgering the BBC to let him do the same thing in reverse. His first effort was called 'Mainly About Manhattan', which survived on and off until war broke out.

Cooke had no intention of letting the idea drop. Quite the contrary: he felt the war made the concept even more compelling. From his home in New York, he pleaded with the BBC:

"I believe it is a very grave error not to have a weekly talk from this end, of America and the War. I know it is an assignment of maximum delicacy. But the alternative is something that makes me lie awake at nights: it is the miserable, and by no means impossible, prospect that from silence may develop a habit of recrimination between the two countries."

The reply from Broadcasting House in London ought to have scuppered his ambitions for good: "Whilst I think there is a need for the USA to understand the British situation, I do not feel at this stage there is an equivalent need for us to understand the American point of view."

Cooke, however, simply ignored this rebuff, and was repaid eventually with a share of a wartime programme of great renown. It was called American Commentary, and it was the true begetter of 'Letter from America'.

The ability to 'seduce and satisfy' the listener

In other words, the Letter is not just the longest running speech radio broadcast in human history, it is still now what it always was: one man's lifelong crusade to slay misconceptions and prejudice, in a quest for the Holy Grail of Anglo-American harmony.

In the process it has won a faithful worldwide audience of several million and many friends in high places. Clementine Churchill once sent him a copy of her husband's memoirs with the inscription, 'to Alistair Cooke, whose broadcasts gave the author such pleasure'.

When Cooke was awarded an honorary knighthood in 1973, the Queen is reputed to have expressed bewildered admiration at his ability to sit down, week after week, and communicate so directly with his audience.

Harold Macmillan tuned in regularly after he discovered that his chauffeur timed their trips to coincide with the repeat of the Letter (in those days) on Monday morning.

Ronald Reagan recorded a special 80th birthday tribute to Cooke, and ex-President FW de Klerk of South Africa often picked the broadcasts up on the World Service.

The Letter also brought Cooke into correspondence with many important cultural figures, like Arthur C. Clarke and the philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin.

Has it worked? It's hard, naturally, to measure the effects of Cooke's labours, but some of those at the heart of Anglo-American affairs believe he made a discernible difference.

Raymond Seitz, formerly American Ambassador to Britain and a confirmed Anglophile, talks about the insight provided by the Letters from America and adds: "I think he has provided comfort that things which appeared to the British eye bizarre or impetuous or ramshackle - all of which we Americans are - he could put it all in a context, in a wonderful, conversational, matter-of-fact way. He could say, "Don't get excited about this. That's the way we do things over here."'

Outside BBC Broadcasting House on a recent visit to the UK

And so Alistair Cooke goes on, unable to lay aside the burden he has chosen to bear. The Letter will reach Number 2,600 in December, and who knows what number before infirmity finally compels him to pack away his portable typewriter for the last time?

The trick - it seems to me - is based on the most lucid of writing styles, but also on a remarkable breadth of knowledge stored in a fine memory bank, combined with a story-teller's ability to build up suspense and artistic tension.

When the finished talk is delivered in those mellifluous tones, listeners are drawn in, seduced and finally satisfied by the way, after thirteen or fourteen minutes, the pattern of the piece emerges, sonata-like, from the apparently disparate elements from which it is constructed.

And there's a bonus. As the distinguished commentator and critic, T.S.Matthews, wrote in 'The Sugar Pill': "Alistair Cooke, like the late H.L.Mencken, as an American (by adoption) naturally spends most of his time laughing. One reason he finds the United States inextinguishably amusing is that he is in love with the country, in a way that perhaps only a converted Britisher can be."