A feeling of great depression descends over agriculture

Many years ago I was fortunate to meet Alistair Cooke in theBBC premises in Edinburgh’s Queen Street. The great man was there apparently to record an instalment of his Letter from America.

Cooke sat there for a few minutes smoking a cigarette in his own fashion. I made the inevitable platitudes, said very little, but did ask him about Watergate and the demise of Richard Nixon.

His response was more or less to the effect that Nixon had it coming. Our conversation must have lasted no more than two minutes, but it was one of those occasions in life that I will never forget.

This year marks the centenary of Cooke’s birth and the other day for the umpteenth time, I dug out his America specifically to find out how he saw the great US depression and stock market crash that kicked in on 24 October, 1929. Cooke wrote: "The Everest of the 1929 stock market was a mountain of credit built on a molehill of actual money." That sounds familiar.