Mern Þonke

Today I want to take a moment to mourn the passing of Alistair Cooke, who died yesterday at the age of 95. Cooke was the host of Letter from America, broadcast weekly on BBC Radio 4, which ran for a staggering 58 years from 1946 until his retirement at the beginning of this month. Cooke began his broadcasts at a time when Britain and the United States were about to begin their most profound journeys along different cultural trajectories since American independence. Cooke served as a bridge between the two cultures, keeping his British listeners informed about the latest developments in the increasingly strange phenomenon that was America. (His very first broadcast included a translation of the American ‘corn’ to ‘maize’, a translation few Britons would require today.) Although Cooke eventually became an American citizen, he never lost his connexion with his British audience, and his unique dual perspective allowed him to speak with a voice that reflected both the shared and the divergent characters of the two cultures. Further, the sheer number of his broadcasts over such a great length of time makes Letter from America a profoundly valuable historical resource. Currently, you can hear and read samples (including his last letter) on the Radio 4 web site, but I sincerely hope that the BBC has plans to produce transcripts of all his broadcasts and make them available for scholars.