Product Description

During his broadcasting career Alistair Cooke met and knew some of the twentieth century's most fascinating and legendary figures, in journalism, politics, public life, sport and film. This is his highly personal and revealing account of six remarkable men who crossed Cooke's path during his lifetime and who, each in their own way, made a lasting impression on him. Here are candid portraits of the lovable yet unreliable Charlie Chaplin, who, when asked to be Cooke's best man, mysteriously vanished on the day; the complex and private man behind Humphrey Bogart's tough guy image; and the charming yet childlike 'golden boy' Edward VIII. Cooke also recalls his friend and mentor, the flawed contrarian and satirist H.L. Mencken, the larger-than-life liberal politician Adlai Stevenson and the heroic social reformer Bertrand Russell. Each superbly realized portrait gives us an insight into a golden age of 'great men', and is a masterpiece of observation, warmth and humour.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #273954 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Alistair Cooke enjoyed an extraordinary life in print, radio and television. Born in Manchester in 1908 and educated at the universities of Cambridge, Yale and Harvard, he was the Guardian’s Senior Correspondent in New York for twenty-five years and the host of groundbreaking cultural programmes on American television and of the BBC series America. He was, however, best known both at home and abroad for his weekly BBC broadcast Letter from America, which reported on fifty-eight years of US life, was heard over five continents and totalled 2,869 broadcasts before his retirement in February 2004, far and away the longest-running radio series in broadcasting history.

Customer Reviews

Insightful and Unbiased
As is usual with any of Alistair Cooke's writing, that unmistakable transatlantic voice can be heard behind the words as if the author himself was reading his work to an audience of one - you. The generations who would remember the men of whom he has written are fast coming to an end, but there is enough in each of these insightful vignettes to whet the appetite of a true biography-phile of whatever era. I would say that Cooke enjoyed the company of each of his subjects, but that did not put him beyond objective honesty. The saddest, most poignant and ultimately most honest comment of all was that of his summing up of Edward VIII - "The most damning epitaph you can compose about Edward - as a prince, as a king, as a man - is one that all comfortable people should cower from deserving:he was at his best only when the going was good"