Alistair Cooke: A Biography [Hardcover]

Nick Clarke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 20, 2000

One of the preeminent journalists of the twentieth century, Alistair Cooke has enjoyed a truly extraordinary career in print, radio, and television. Born into a working-class family and christened Alfred, Cooke swiftly broke free of his modest origins and became the foremost commentator on American life and politics, first for the British press and eventually for the entire world. Alistair Cooke is both a fascinating record of one man's determination to reinvent himself and a lively and informative h=journey through the highways and byways of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Clarke, a BBC television and radio journalist in London, rarely brings Cooke (b. 1908) to life on the pages of this new biography, already published in England. To lots of Americans, the British-born Cooke is known primarily as the urbane, erudite host of Masterpiece Theatre. But that incarnation did not begin until 1971. Long before that, Cooke had established himself as a print and broadcast journalist commentator, specializing n helping his native citizenry understand their rebellious and remarkable colonies of long-ago. Cooke arrived in the U. S. in 1932 not to become a journalist, but rather to study theater at Yale. Nobody, including Cooke, realized then that America would become his adopted home for the rest of the century, and that he would become its interpreter to a significant part of the world. Journalists are usually outsiders, dependent on what insiders will tell them. That means biographies of journalists are difficult to write compellingly, because the subjects are rarely primary actors. Clarke's accounts of how outsider Cooke did, and did not, cover the administrations of various U.S. presidents are, for the most part, stultifying. Clarke is more successful when examining Cooke's personal life. He discusses nothing scandalous or even lewd, but there are moments of insight, such as the 20-something budding intellectual adopting the name "Alistair" to substitute for the Alfred chosen by his parents; his inability to deal sensibly with money, whether poor or relatively wealthy and his occasionally tense family life. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

He was born Alfred Cooke in a Manchester suburb. The family moved to Blackpool, where Cooke's iron-fitter father ultimately became an insurance agent. Younger son Alfred was bright and found success at the selective Blackpool Secondary School and then Cambridge. At Cambridge, in 1930, at age 22, he added "Alistair" to his name by deed poll. In the '30s, Cooke did graduate work at Yale and Harvard and struggled to break into journalism and broadcasting. Then, and through the early years of World War II, Cooke worked to explain the U.S. (where he became a citizen during the war) to Britain, and Britain to the U.S. His thousands of BBC "Letters from America" continued that effort into the 1990s. Cooke also wrote for British and U.S. newspapers and magazines even as he found a new role in television, hosting series from Omnibus to Masterpiece Theater and authoring the highly profitable America: A Personal History. BBC broadcaster Clarke, who had Cooke's cooperation, tells the story of Cooke's peripatetic life entertainingly. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; First U.S. Edition edition (November 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559705485
• ISBN-13: 978-1559705486
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,915,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lacks the master's touch, July 5, 2004

By 

Bruce Corneil (Melbourne , Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alistair Cooke: A Biography (Hardcover)

Alistair Cooke lived for nearly one hundred years and that's about how long it will take you to read this book.

On the plus side, author Nick Clarke has certainly been thorough. He does provide an insight into the subject's career, his personal life and his complex personality.

Unfortunately, the whole thing moves along at a snail's pace and at well over 500 pages you'll need the dedication of a Tibetan monk in order to stick with it.

In my opinion, it should have been trimmed back and sharpened up considerably with a lot more pace being injected into the text during the editing process.

Cooke, a veteran journalist and prolific author himself, was a master at creating bright and colourful profiles of famous people, places and events. I only wish that he had written a comprehensive autobiography in order to tell the story of his own life in detail.

This publication IS definitely worth adding to your bookshelves if you are a fan of "Alistair the Great". It does the job but it lacks the master's touch.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It Should Have Landed In New York, November 29, 2010

By 

Don Reed "Don" (Cliffside Park NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alistair Cooke: A Biography (Paperback)

Alistair Cooke, A Biography, Nick Clarke; Arcade Publishing (1999)

The first 400 pages or so were generally a pleasure to read. Then Nick lost his way.

Overwriting marinated in verbosity -stoutly barred from entry, previously - gradually seeped into the author's mix, & thus, the final 100+ pages were pure drudgery (I had a flashback to a long-ago decade when reading had been impersonally assigned & if you were stuck with a lemon, tough. This was the liberation of being able to read solely for pleasure, personal enrichment, & revelation - forfeited).

I also became exasperated with the author's casual offering of useless partial dates (i.e., "March 3rd") instead of the real thing ("March 3rd, 1932"), which too often made chronological orientation impossible - because of Clark's habit of flitting ahead in time & then backtracking to an earlier month (belonging to an unspecified year).

Reading continuity is ruined when it becomes necessary to return to pages already read into order to find the last year ("1942," etc.) mentioned, so that it is possible to figure out what year it had been on the page from which the unnecessary inquiry had commenced.

" `Cooke insisted that the programmes should be chronological [in structure]. That way, he said, you could hold the audience's attention from week to week.' "

This recollection by the producer of the America historical television series, quoted by none other than the author, regretfully did not make a great enough impression on the author doing the quoting & the editor doing the editing.

(The producer's name, Michael Gill, today is unfortunately synonymous with a scoundrel who has just been banished from entering his horses in Pennsylvanian races. Rest assured, they are not the same man.)

It is not enough just to be able to write well. The absence in ACAB of wit - quoted from subjects & the author's own - was also a liability.

Thank goodness for the irrepressibly peevish H.L. Mencken who inspired Clarke to write that he "still complaining about the [his excessive hotel] air conditioning [which - combined with the inferno that was the 1948 Democratic Party's convention hall - had invested him with a whammo cold & fever] as if it were some New Deal Conspiracy."

But during the previous 230 pages, readers looking for a balance of wit & serious subject matter got stiffed.

Mostly, no regrets; & having written this before entering into the caldron of the Amazon reviews, I wouldn't be surprising if the previous votes have created a near-perfect 4.8 stars-across-the-board rating.

[Post Note: I am astonished that this book has garnered exactly one review prior to mine - & that not a single copy of the hardcover edition is available for sale.]

But that final descent - as if the book were a transatlantic plane, having made it to New York from London & then ordered to continue to fly on to Los Angeles after its first approach to the Kennedy runway had been inexplicably aborted- of the last chapters just did me in.

Hence this sincere, yet unenthused, endorsement of Alistair Cooke, A Biography.

[PN 05/24/11: The worthless scoundrels at the Telegraph (UK) wrote a fairy tale obituary of Jane White Cooke, born 01/10/13, Montclair, N.J. Happiest marriage ever of any two mortals on earth, etc. Infuriating.]