A great reporter

ALISTAIR COOKE, the broadcaster and journalist, has died.

As Kenneth Tynan said: “Cooke is one of the great reporters. Nobody can reproduce events, giving the feel as well as the facts, the pith as well as the husk, with greater clarity or gentler wit.”

Marconi would gladly have shared the Nobel Prize with his fellow broadcaster whose monastic simplicity was such that he used a manual typewriter all his working life.