I enjoy almost everything Cooke has written (with the exception of The Homefront). I'm 4/6 through this book and especially reccomend the piece on Chaplin.
From the back book cover:
As a writer and a journalist, Alistair Cooke has provided commentary of people and events in both Britain and the US for over half a century. In this book he shares empressions of 6 great men whom he has known and admired: Charlie Chaplin, King Edward VIII, H.L. Mencken, Humphrey Bogart, Adlai Stevenson, and Bertrand Russell. With the keen eye of a reporter and the candor of an intimate friend, Cooke gives us a warm and frank view of these legendary figures--a personal perspective on the men behind the fame and public personae.
As a writer and a journalist, Alistair Cooke has provided commentary of people and events in both Britain and the US for over half a century. In this book he shares empressions of 6 great men whom he has known and admired: Charlie Chaplin, King Edward VIII, H.L. Mencken, Humphrey Bogart, Adlai Stevenson, and Bertrand Russell. With the keen eye of a reporter and the candor of an intimate friend, Cooke gives us a warm and frank view of these legendary figures--a personal perspective on the men behind the fame and public personae.
Alastair Cooke was a noted TV reporter and commentator in the 1960s to 1990s. In his time, he was an American voice for the Manchester Guardian newspaper in England. This collection is of his recollections of six men he had known and admired: Charles Chaplin; Edward VIII; H.L. Mencken; Humphrey Bogart; Adlai Stevenson; and Bertrand Russell. The profiles are written in admiration but not adulation -- it is the inconsistency and the disconnect in their personalities that make great men, or even lesser men, interesting to their peers. Cooke was first of all a reporter; these descriptions are almost as much of himself at the times he knew these men as they are of the men themselves; and these profiles are exemplary of his finest work. 208 pp.
