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Alistair Cooke

Alistair Cooke Biography

Journalist

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“All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumble and begin to poke around for rumors of another Messiah.”

PeopleThinkingMenYearsWellsLooksRunningPresidentHe ManCoupleThirdsElectionSinnerHeroicPresidencyRumorMosesFeverMessiahCrusadesPoke
Author:Alistair Cooke
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“To get an elementary grasp of the game of golf, a human must learn, by endless practice, a continuous and subtle series of highly unnatural movements, involving about sixty-four muscles, that result in a seemingly natural swing, taking two seconds to begin and end.”

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Book:Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements
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“I wrote to Mr. McEnroe, Senior. I said: "Here is the sentence once written by the immortal Bobby Jones. I thought you might like to have it done in needlepoint and mounted in a suitable frame to hang over Little John's bed. It says, The rewards of golf - and of life, too, I expect - are worth very little if you don't play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules." I never heard from Mr. McEnroe, Senior. I can only conclude that the letter went astray.”

IfsWellsLittlesSaidI CanDonePlayMightGamesWrittenHeardBedLettersGolfRewardsSentencesImmortalSeniorEtiquetteSuitableHang Over
Author:Alistair Cooke
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“So the British, of all ages, still walk the course. On trips to Florida or the American desert, they still marvel, or shudder, at the fleets of electric carts going off in the morning like the first assault wave at the Battle of El Alamein. It is unlikely, for some time, that a Briton will come across in his native land such a scorecard as Henry Longhurst rescued from a California club and cherished till the day he died. The last on its list of local rules printed the firm warning "A Player on Foot Has No Standing on the Course."”

FirstsStillsAgeLastsCoursesWalksMorningPlayerFeetLandBattleStandingDiedGolfWaveClubsBritishListsLocalsDesertFirmCaliforniaNativeWarningElectricFloridaAssaultUnlikelyPrintedCartsNative LandBritonsElectric Car
Author:Alistair Cooke
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“The Scots say that Nature itself dictated that golf should be played by the seashore. Rather, the Scots saw in the eroded sea coasts a cheap battleground on which they could whip their fellow men in a game based on the Calvinist doctrine that man is meant to suffer here below and never more than when he goes out to enjoy himself.”

MenShouldSufferingGamesEnjoySawsSeaFellowsGolfDoctrineCoastFellow ManWhipsScotsBattlegroundSeashore
Book:Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements
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“The emblem on the necktie reserved for the members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews - The Vatican of golf - is of St. Andrew himself bearing the slatier cross on which, once he was captured at Patras, he was to be stretched before he was crucified.Only the Scots would have thought of celebrating a national game with the figure of a tortured saint.”

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Book:Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements
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“I hasten to say to snobs from the Surrey pine-and-sand country that no invention since the corn plaster or the electric toothbrush has brought greater balm to the extremities of the senior golfer than the golfmobile, a word that will have to do for want of a better.”

WantCountryGreaterGolfInventionSandElectricSeniorCornGolfersSnobExtremityPlastersToothbrushesSurrey
Book:Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements
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“Sir Guy Campbell's classic account of the formation of the links, beginning with Genesis and moving step by step to the thrilling arrival of 'tilth' on the fingers of coastal land, suggests that such notable features of our planet as dinosaurs, the prairies, the Himalayas, the seagull, the female of the species herself, were accidental by-products of the Almighty's preoccupation with the creation of the Old Course at St. Andrews.”

MovingGuyCoursesStepsLandCreationPlanetsProductsFemaleAccountsGolfSpeciesFingersFeaturesClassicLinksAlmightyThrillingOur PlanetFormationNotableGenesisDinosaursArrivalsPreoccupationAndrewPrairieSeagullCoastalHimalayas
Book:Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements
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“More than anything else, though, to anyone who would write about it, golf offers a four-hour drama in two acts, which becomes memorable even in the tape-recorded reminiscenses of old champs, and which - in the hands of someone like Herb Wind - can become a piece of war correspondence as artfully controlled as Alan Morehead's account of Gallipoli.”

WritingTwoWarHandsHoursPiecesFourWindDramaOffersAccountsGolfMemorableControlledTapeHerbsCorrespondenceGallipoli
Book:Fun & Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements
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“For many years I had an impression of my golf swing, which was that I vividly resembled Tom Weiskopf in the takeaway and Dave Marr on the downswing. Unfortunately, there came a day when I was invited to have my golf swing filmed via a video camera. Something I will never do again. When it was played back, what I saw - what you would have seen - was not Weiskopf and Marr but a man simultaneously climbing into a sweater and falling out of a tree.”

MenYearsFallSawsTreeCamerasGolfImpressionVideoClimbingSwingsTomsInvitedSweatersDaveGolf SwingVideo CamerasTakeaways
Book:Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements
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“When that happens [the demise of golf], old men will furtively beckon to their sons and, like fugitives from the guillotine recalling the elegant orgies at the court of Louis XV, will recite the glories of Portmarnock and Merion, of the Road Hole at St. Andrews, the sixth at Seminole, the eighteenth at Pebble Beach. They will take out this volume from its secret hiding place and they will say: "There is no question, son, that these were unholy places in an evil age. Unfortunately, I had a whale of a time."”

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Author:Alistair Cooke
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“To watch an American on a beach, or crowding into a subway, or buying a theatre ticket, or sitting at home with his radio on, tells you something about one aspect of the American character: the capacity to withstand a great deal of outside interference, so to speak; a willing acceptance of frenzy which, though it's never self-conscious, amounts to a willingness to let other people have and assert their own lively, and even offensive, character. They are a tough race in this.”

PeopleSelfCharacterHomeSpeakDealsRaceWatchesAcceptanceWillingAmountConsciousSittingToughCapacityAspectTheaterRadioBeachBuyingWillingnessTicketsOffensiveSelf ConsciousLivelyInterferenceSubwayFrenzyAmerican Character
Author:Alistair Cooke
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“It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.”

Has BeensDoctrineBoardsThanksgivingTurkeysSauceTomatoesThanksgiving DayThanksgiving HolidayThanksgiving GreetingsFunny Happy ThanksgivingGood ThanksgivingThanksgiving TurkeyTurkeys On ThanksgivingDelectableHappy Thanksgiving PoemsTurkey DayCranberriesDay After ThanksgivingThanksgiving Card
Book:Talk About America: 1951–1968
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“In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.”

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Author:Alistair Cooke
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