Living document

It takes Alistair Cooke three minutes, or about 450 words, before he finally gets round to declaring ‘I was there’ — on the night that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968. Cooke was talking just a few days later on his weekly Letter from America slot on Radio 4. You might think Cooke would not have been able to contain his excitement that after 30 years on the job as a foreign correspondent he had at last actually been there as an eye-witness to this dramatic ‘accidental convulsion of history’. But, no, Cooke, as the ultimate professional, understood that for us, his listeners, the impact of his account would be enhanced 300 per cent if he gave us a preamble, a slow build. So he begins that extraordinary letter by explaining how it’s too often assumed that foreign correspondents are always there on the spot when bad things happen.