J W M Thompson
Across-The-Pond Life
Letters from America: 1946-2004
By Alistair Cooke
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.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2