Alistair Cooke at the Movies - Tapa blanda

Covering seventy-five years of brilliant reporting, Alistair Cooke At the Movies, edited by Geoff Brown, gives us a new insight into the world of film from one of the twentieth century's most beloved writers.

Long before Alistair Cooke became known for his Letter from America BBC Broadcasts, he was a film reviewer. He began writing about cinema as a Cambridge undergraduate and continued to report on film when he went to live in New York, never losing his passion for the movies.

This vivid and fascinating new collection brings together the very best of Cooke's writing about film. It selects the most sparkling of his little-known flilm reviews, and contains his journalism on everything from the trauma of the Hollywood blacklist to the robbery of Zsa Zsa Gabor's jewels. It also includes his affectionate recollections of various stars he knew and admired, among them Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart.

'Alistair Cooke was a serious movie fan ... his passion for films is sharply caught in this collection'
  Philip French, Observer

'Opens windows into the history of a medium ... the highlights of this thorough volume are Cooke's reminiscences of his meetings with the stars'
  The Times Literary Supplement

Alistair Cooke (1908-2004) enjoyed an extraordinary life in print, radio and television. The Guardian's Senior Correspondent in New York for twenty-five years and the host of groundbreaking cultural programmes on American television and of the BBC series America, Cooke was, however, best known both at home and abroad for his weekly BBC broadcast Letter from America, which reported on fifty-eight years of US life, was heard over five continents and totalled 2,869 broadcasts before his retirement in February 2004, far and away the longest-running radio series in broadcasting history.

Alistair Cooke enjoyed an extraordinary life in print, radio and television. Born in Manchester in 1908 and educated at the universities of Cambridge, Yale and Harvard, he was the Guardian's Senior Correspondent in New York for twenty-five years and the host of groundbreaking cultural programmes on American television and for the BBC. He was best known for his weekly BBC broadcast Letter from America, which reported on fifty-eight years of US life, was heard over five continents and totalled 2,869 broadcasts before his retirement in February 2004.

Geoff Brown began writing about cinema at Cambridge University. He has been film critic of The Times and has contributed to many publications, including Directors in British and Irish Cinema (associate editor) and the magazine Sight and Sound. He currently writes on classical music for The Times.