J W M Thompson

Across-The-Pond Life

Letters from America: 1946-2004

By

Allen Lane The Penguin Press 504pp £25 order from our bookshop

This fairly hefty volume contains transcripts of upwards of a hundred of the late Alistair Cooke’s celebrated broadcasts. I calculate that if every one of his ‘Letters from America’ were to be collected they would fill about thirty equally bulky books: a reminder that while the quality of Cooke’s journalistic output has been widely recognised, his sheer professional productivity is not to be taken for granted either.

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