An eerie snapshot of war.

(From Irish Independent)

Like American television journalist Ed Murrow, who was the subject of George Clooney's excellent filmGood Night and Good Luck, Alistair Cooke belonged to an elite band of broadcasters, a breed which has practically been squeezed to extinction in the ego-infested, personality-driven modern media: broadcasters in whom listeners and viewers have an unshakeable faith.

Whatever he said, whatever he wrote, you took on trust as being truthful, considered and motivated by integrity. Back in 1941, though, Cooke wasn't the towering figure we remember today; he was 33 and struggling to support himself, his wife and their three-year-old child on scraps of work for radio and the newspapers.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and dragged the US into the Second World War, the BBC commissioned Cooke to travel around America, lugging bulky, supposedly portable equipment with him, and file reports on how the war was impinging on ordinary citizens and communities.

The timing wasn't ideal. Cooke's marriage was already in trouble and taking the assignment would mean leaving his family behind in England. But he grasped the opportunity. Cooke saw in it the seeds of a book, which he planned to callAn Introduction to War.

As Cooke himself ...