Alistair Cooke, a broadcasting legend in his native Britain and adopted United States, has died at the age of 95, less than a month after he recorded his final "Letter from America", BBC radio said Tuesday.
In a brief statement, the BBC said Cooke - who had been suffering from heart disease and arthritis - passed away around midnight (0500 GMT) on Monday at his home in New York.
"His daughter Suzy Cooke contacted his biographer Nick Clark with the sad news," it said.
It was on doctor's orders that Cooke aired his last "Letter from America" on March 6 on BBC domestic and World Service radio, ending a weekly series of 15-minute essays that ran for 58 years.
Cooke was a household name among Americans, too, both as host of the cultural programmes "Omnibus" and "Masterpiece Theatre," and for his 1970s TV history of their country, titled "Alistair Cooke's America".
"Alistair Cooke was one of the greatest broadcasters ever in the history of the BBC and an outstanding commentator of the 20th century," said BBC acting director general Mark Byford.
"Letter from America" was a BBC fixture ever since it first went out in March 1946, five years before the debut of the public broadcaster's inexhaustible soap opera "The Archers".
It was easy to imagine Cooke at the microphone in the book-lined study of his Manhattan apartment, looking out over Central Park, as he patiently tried to explain to his listeners the vast, often bewildering land that lay beyond.
True to Cooke's erudite nature, "Letter from America" ran the gamut from high intrigue in the corridors of power in Washington to the significance of serving cranberry sauce with turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Of being a Brit among Yanks, he told his biographer Nick Clarke: "It is a great privilege for anyone who knows both countries well to be able to watch two different kinds of human beings."
Only three times did Cooke miss filing a "Letter", but in recent months regular listeners could sense his flagging health in his voice. Many wondered how he could ever finish a broadcast.
Cooke's mellifluous voice belied his origins as an iron-fitter's son from the working-class English seaside resort of Blackpool, his college years at Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, and the US citizenship that he took out in 1941. Cooke is survived by his wife and two daughters.
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