tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6126042.post-1078872641412849932004-03-09T22:50:00.000Z2004-03-09T23:01:10.780Z We were sad to hear, in the last few days, that Alistair Cooke had said his last "G'd evening" on Letter from America, bringing to an end a 58-year-old tradition. But it was good to note that the very last Letter, broadcast on Friday 20 February, was right up there with his best. It talked, inevitably, about the past – about the first Gulf War, about the first President Bush, about Clinton, about George W, about the second Gulf War and about Saddam. Then it came right up to the present, too, as it talked about how George W Bush's poll ratings, consistently above 60% for month after month, fell below 50% when the CIA's former weapons inspector, David Kay, said the fateful words: "We got it all wrong." And it deftly, elegantly, linked this through to the resurgence of Democrat hopes and the momentum building up behind Senator John Kerry. Vintage artistry from the veteran commentator. But it also reflected, in a little throwaway line, Alistair Cooke's wonderful awareness and ear for language. After running through the story of the 1991 Gulf War and its consequences, he neatly turned the course of his argument with the rhetorical question: "So what, as Shakespeare asked, is the concernancy?" Superb. Could there ever have been a more George-W-Bush-like word than "concernancy"? Yet Cooke, of course, never got things like that wrong. Scurrying to the source, we quickly tracked down the Prince's teasing conversation with the foppish windbag Osric in Act V Scene II of Hamlet. Hamlet dazzles Osric with one of the most ridiculously overblown and Bush-like speeches anywhere in Shakespeare ("Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of memory...." and so on), before going on to ask him about the "concernancy", by which time the poor sap is completely lost and bemused. It's a fine moment in the play. And just dropping in this strange word, with its unexplained but unmissable link to the President, created a fine moment in Alistair Cooke's last Letter from America. We're going to miss that kind of link between language and life. We'll miss that feeling that, whatever else changes on Radio 4 or in the world at large, we can always come back – even after years away – to the calm intelligence and grace of radio's great stylist. At 95, he can hardly be blamed for deserting his post. But most of us who've grown up, maybe even grown old, listening to that voice will miss it hugely. And most of us whose work is with words will miss his constant reminders of the art and craft of language. G'd evening, Alistair. Get some rest now. And thank you again. ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00882602151850785568noreply@blogger.com