Alistair Cooke claimed he was filing a story from New York on a day when I could prove he was in London
Published 08 November 1999
"I nearly bought your book," the man said. It was a gripping moment for a novice author, a few hours after seeing his finished volume for the very first time - concrete evidence that the product of five years' hard labour might have a market value. It was a pity about that "nearly", though.
"What stopped you?" I inquired.
"Oh, it was too heavy. I've got to go back to town by train, you see."
I'd never really expected weight to be the deciding factor in a potential reader's decision, so I put the thing on the scales when I got home; two pounds, six and three- quarter ounces. It seemed light at the price.
This exchange took place in the Writer's Room at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, where I'm preparing to interview John Major about his new tome (two pounds 12 ounces - which doesn't seem to have inhibited his rise up the best-seller list). He is in a relaxed and skittish mood and some of his jokes are excellent - particularly about his encounters with Gorby and Yeltsin. ("Tell me Boris, if you had to sum up the state of Russia in one word, what would it be?" "Good." "That's very interesting. And the longer version?" "Not good.") Major even risks a few personal jibes at political opponents - something he always studiously avoided in office: "Robin Cook is probably the only foreign secretary in history to have more trouble at home than abroad . . ."
This is curiously unexpected, like somebody burping at a Victorian tea-party. By the time he finishes his spiel (nearly an hour), there is almost no time for questions. Clearly the ex-PM is going to take every opportunity to paint himself back into the recent history of his party, from which others seem so keen to expunge him.
All this is by way of being a dry-run for my own appearance at the festival a few days later. There is something uniquely scary about an audience of 450 people who have come to subject my own work, Alistair Cooke, to critical scrutiny. With no BBC mantle to cover my authorial nakedness, it feels like sitting an oral exam in a language I barely understand. For comfort, I have props on hand - in particular a 20-minute filmed conversation with Cooke, who was feeling ill at the time, yet still managed to be opinionated, witty and wicked.
Had he enjoyed the experience of being a biographer's subject, I wondered?
"Not for a moment," he snapped back with patent sincerity.
He had been in his mid-80s when I first approached him, and quite ready to enjoy what Rupert Brooke called "that unhoped serene,/That men call age". And then I started ploughing up the smooth surface of his life.
The other comfort that evening is to have John Cole on the platform to discuss the book. Being a BBC/Guardian veteran like Cooke, he comes with a fund of stories, and it needs forensic skills to insert one or two anecdotes of my own - like the one about Cooke's fabled memory: how he insisted to me that he had written his first piece as New York reporter for the Times on a day in 1938 when I could prove that he was actually 3,000 miles away in London, recording a BBC programme.
Afterwards comes the book-signing, a ceremony invested with both anticipation and dread. To my astonishment, one of the book-buyers introduces herself as the daughter of the man who invented Letter from America - Lindsay Wellington. It was in March 1946 that Wellington commissioned the first series of 13 broadcasts. The latest episode is number 2,647.
Good news and bad news - a two-part serialisation of my book in Cooke's old paper features a traditional Grauniad howler: a reference to his daughter, Susie, is followed by a helpful explanation in brackets - "[his wife]". A classic misprint would have been better, like the one I unearthed from the paper's 1969 redesign. Cooke was persuaded to contribute an acclamatory article (breaking a lifelong injunction against allowing his name to be used for advertising or publicity), and his piece was followed by a glowing reference to the work of the paper's "criculation manager".
The climax of this long launch is a reception hosted by the American embassy. The chance to enjoy such a prestigious venue has as much to do with Cooke's fame as with my own endeavours, and the cultural attache, T J Dowling ("just T J, please"), pays his respects to the absent guest of honour by recalling, in glowing terms, Cooke's 1972 television history, America.
Cooke himself did not make the trip, deeming Britain in November to be too distant and too cold. He was flattered, I think, by the implied tribute of a party in his name in such august surroundings, if slightly miffed that the occasion did nothing to promote his own new book - a volume of essays entitled The Great and the Good. Since our names are so close alphabetically, we are doomed to nestle together on many bookshop shelves. And that's another thing. Cooke vowed from the start that he had no interest in reading what I wrote and claims to have resisted the temptation to peep at any of the articles or extracts I've published. Will he really be able to exercise such restraint with the book itself?
"Alistair Cooke" is published by Weidenfeld, £20/£17
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