Alistair Cooke at the Movies - Tapa dura

On the 8th of October 1934, long before the wider world knew him from his Letter from America broadcasts, his television series America, or his introductions to Masterpiece Theatre, Alistair Cooke sat down at a BBC microphone to give his first radio talk. His subject was cinema. Cooke began film reviewing in the 1920s as a Cambridge undergraduate, and continued to broadcast on cinema from New York. Under his watchful gaze, Hollywood reached its Golden Age, only to be tarnished by television; he clocked every new technological development, from the arrival of talkies to the video cassette. He also observed cinema's personalities, writing tributes to Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper, James Cagney and others, always illuminating their special gifts and the way they reflected the American scene.

Since the 1930s, Alistair Cooke's lively film reviews have largely slumbered unpublished and unheard. Alistair Cooke at the Movies selects the most sparkling. We meet Cooke the biographer, affectionately recalling various stars he knew and admired, among them Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart. This is a fascinating new collection for Cooke's devoted readers and listeners, and for anyone interested in the 20th century parade of American and European films.

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 of the BBC series America. 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.