Early Life
Cooke was born in Salford, Lancashire, England. His father was a lay Methodist preacher and metalsmith by trade; his mother's family were of Irish Protestant origin. Originally named Alfred, he changed his name to Alistair when he was 22. He was educated at Blackpool Grammar School, Blackpool and won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he gained an honours degree (2:1) in English. He was heavily involved in the arts, was editor of Granta, and set up the Mummers, Cambridge's first mixed sex theatre group, from which he notably rejected a young James Mason, telling him to stick to architecture.
Cooke became engaged to Henrietta Riddle, the daughter of Henry Ainley. While he was attending Yale University and Harvard University on a Commonwealth fund fellowship, she deserted him. He met Ruth Emerson, a great-grandniece of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1933, and they married on 24 August 1934.
Alistair Cooke divorced Ruth in 1944, and married Jane White Hawkes, a portrait painter and the widow of neurologist A. Whitfield Hawkes, the son of Albert W. Hawkes, on 30 April 1946. Their daughter, Susan, was born on 22 March 1949.
Read more about this topic: Alistair Cooke
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own—even more, one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)