Given the avalanche of abuse that Quentin Letts received in daring to criticise Alistair Cooke (Letters, 27 November), I feel I ought to say a few words in his defence. I share his opinion that Letter from America is boring. As I live now in Hungary I hear Cooke on the World Service. I often find his Letters anecdotal and rambling, sometimes to the point of incoherence. This week's, on Thanksgiving, was fairly typical - a bit of history from the early settlers, laced with a supposedly witty remark of Churchill's at a dinner in New York and some comments about the anger felt by Native Americans. That was it. There was very little that couldn't have been gleaned from a basic history primer.

My wife is American and I have lived in the USA. What I miss in Cooke's Letters, apart from the lack of any reference to Seattle (my US "home town") that doesn't include Bill Gates, is a sense of the vibrant nature of American culture and life. Cooke's America is bland and bears little resemblance to the America I experienced in and around Seattle: the "U" district with its transvestites; the pulsating drive of the local grunge bands; a city still proud of its radical and labour tradition; American blue-collar life and culture which is often looked down on but which I find full of warmth, humour and values not dissimilar to those from my own South Yorkshire; and, finally, the amazing American landscape. Of course there's more to the US than one city or even one state - I use Seattle only as an example - but Cooke (who is excessively oriented towards the East Coast) misses all this and much more.

Finally, judging by the way my wife yells "You're wrong!" at the radio during his broadcasts, it isn't only the boredom factor that needs addressing.

John Cunningham
Pecs, Hungary

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