Alistair Cooke’s first Letter from America – initially called American Letter – was broadcast in March, 1946. It was to be the first of 2,869 such broadcasts, spanning 58 years, making it by far the longest-running talk programme of any radio station in the world.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f6hbp

The 920 surviving recordings, broadcast between 1946 and 2004, are now online. The can be searched by date and by theme, the latter including such categories as US presidents, race, music & movies, history and so on.

This is one of over 1,250 resources listed on the BUFVC’s Moving Image Gateway here.