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Cooke and Ustinov
Alastair Cooke has died. And two days earlier, Sir Peter Ustinov. All the icons of my boyhood are slip-slip-sliding away.
I've been wondering why it was that Ustinov did so little with his supposedly vast talent, and I think it was because his view of human nature was just too rosy for the times. He believed (as Cooke did too) in the supremacy and triumph of reason. He was (and there's nothing the 20th century hated more) a sentimentalist.
I've been wondering why it was that Ustinov did so little with his supposedly vast talent, and I think it was because his view of human nature was just too rosy for the times. He believed (as Cooke did too) in the supremacy and triumph of reason. He was (and there's nothing the 20th century hated more) a sentimentalist.