New eLetters from America follows in the footsteps of Alistair Cooke’s journey across the United States, between the post-war years to his passing in 2004. His original “Letters from America” began in 1946 and were enormously successful for the BBC. The series finally came to an end 58 years (2,869 installments) later, in March 2004. Cooke was 95 years old and reluctantly retired on advice from doctors. He died shortly after having left a legacy of American history during a period of change and volatility. As a boy and into adulthood Gibbons was enchanted by the regular sunday morning radio program broadcast on BBC’s radio four. His father rarely missed the program’s that he had followed himself from their inception in 1946.
The New eLetters from America broadcast monthly, continuing from where Cooke left off with attentive and passionate commentary on the economic, social and political status of the country today. The established and polished style of Cooke’s delivery taken on under different guise by Gibbons to illuminate the extraordinary changes in American society. The program’s reporting from studio and across America’s heart land in concert with the years, a program capturing the fundamental mindset and emotive state of people across the country through carefully planned recordings and film. New Letters of America will cover the sublime and trauma of a country coming to terms with frugality and severe change in a shifting economy and fading decadence that will never again, be seen.
