Alistair Cooke. Americans of a certain age remember Cooke as the host of Masterpiece Theater from its inception in 1970 till 1992, and the writer-presenter of Alistair Cooke’s America.

Alistair Cooke was born Alfred Cooke in Salford, a suburb of Manchester, on Nov. 20, 1908. He legally added Alistair to his name as a college student, saying it had always been his nickname.

Cooke began his travels in the mid-thirties, when pictures of Franklin Roosevelt were the only decoration in the sharecroppers’ tarpaper shacks. I started across the country 20 years later.

Alistair Cooke, the ultra-civilized, silver-haired British broadcaster best known to American audiences as the host of "Masterpiece Theatre," died Tuesday at his home in New York. He had heart ...

Object Details Author Cooke, Alistair 1908-2004 Notes Contains 50 talks from the author's radio program Letters from America. Date 1979 1969-1974 1974-1977 1977- 1971- Call number E855.C67X Type Books ...

LONDON, March 30 -- Alistair Cooke, who died at midnight Tuesday in New York at age 95, was fond of citing George Bernard Shaw's dictum that the United States and Britain are "two nations divided ...