If Alistair Cooke were tellingthis story, he would start with the Chinese restaurant. He might then offer a false lead as to his intended direction by adding a worthy phrase or two about the diligence of those who have come to this country from someplace else and found acceptance only on the basis of their cuisine. But Cooke would soon zero in on the chairs in the restaurant, just as he was able, at his best, to create a world from a first hand description of the rocking chair that accompanied JFK everywhere, or his personal observance of the arrangements for getting FDR into and out of his seat without the public being reminded that their leader was paralysed.
Suddenly Cooke’s pace would quicken. There are only four chairs for people waiting to take food home, nowhere near sufficient on a Saturday night. Then, for a moment Cooke would interrupt himself to parade the bi-lingualism of which he was proud, mentioning that what is known among the British as take-away food is take-out to the Americans.
But soon he’d be back to the chairs. There were not enough to seat the McGirr family. That was why, every week, on the way home from Mass, one member of the family, usually mum, went into the restaurant to get the evening meal on her own. The rest sat out in the car and listened to Cooke’s Letter from America. Cooke delivered the sermons they never heard at Mass. They were harder to forget.
Alistair Cooke was born in Manchester, studied at Cambridge. He won a fellowship which took him to the United States in the 30s where he bought a cheap car and travelled the country until he fell in love with it. In 1934, he became the film critic for the BBC but returned to live permanently in America in 1937. It took him ten years to convince the BBC that a weekly ‘letter’ from across the Atlantic would be of interest to their listeners. In 1946, the organisation said they would try the idea for 13 weeks. Letter from America continued for 58 years, the longest running serial of any kind in any electronic medium. Cooke recorded 2869 broadcasts of uniform length, the last one going to air on March 6 this year. He died three weeks later.
Cooke projected an urbane combination of erudition and modesty. Radio is the most intimate of