Memories of the Great & the Good

Alistair Cooke knew, met, interviewed, or reported on many of the most influential men and women of the twentieth century and in this collection profiles the twenty-three he considered the most remarkable

In his career of more than fifty years broadcasting the BBC radio program Letter from America and as the US correspondent for the Guardian for more than twenty-five years, Alistair Cooke met and mixed with many famous people. In Memories of the Great & the Good he shares his portraits of the men and women that he felt made the world a better, more stimulating place.

We read about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s maintenance of his public image by means of a gentleman’s agreement with the press and Lyndon Johnson’s masterful backroom dealings. “Eisenhower at Gettysburg” reveals a conversation between Cooke and the president, touching on everything from their mutual love of golf to what it was like to grow up in a small Kansas farming town at the turn of the twentieth century.

Literary figures including P. G. Wodehouse, Erma Bombeck, and George Bernard Shaw are succinctly sketched. And, in the final pair of essays, Cooke pays moving tribute to two of the men he admired the most: Winston Churchill and golfing legend Bobby Jones.