Andy D'Agorne

Radio 4 is a wonderful Kaleidoscope of aural material that has a wealth of historical material to draw on so it is fitting that there are programmes marking the lives of those who have contributed so much to that collection of material. One such giant is Studs Terkel who had a daily Chicago radio show spanning 45 years and died recently aged 96

Studs Terkel turned the voice of average Americans into a font of history. In this era of multimedia, recorded oral history may seem an outdated interest, but Terkel's legacy of the daily lives of ordinary Americans in the 50's-80's ranks alongside that of British radio diarist Alistair Cooke who died in March 2004 and was famed for his long running 'Letter from America' (actually started under the title American Letter following the pre war success of an American broadcast on British life for NBC called the 'London Letter'). These are now available in digitised form from the University of East ANglia according to his Wikipedia entry. Cooke also produced a manuscript not published until after his death that recorded the experience of his travels through America in the early days of the Second World War.  In his time Studs captured on the earliest portable tape recorders interviews with anti Vietnam protesters, and for his long running Chicago radio show interviewed everyone ranging from Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to Martin Luther King.
His books based on his interviews included "Division Street," "Hard Times," "Working," and "The Good War," which won the Pulitzer Prize for non fiction, As one blogger quoted in the Chicago Times stated: He was an unrepentant leftie and friend of the little man.