Alistair Cooke offers an overview of many of the people he has known, admired, or "covered" during his long and distinguished career in journalism. During his life Cooke has encountered many luminaries of the 20th century and this volume comprises 23 brief portraits, taking in, among others, writers, statesmen, generals, scientists, musicians and sportsmen, who have impressed him significantly. He does not adhere to the belief "that the business of literary and historical criticism is the cutting down to size of the famous". The collection is not intended merely as a series of eulogies, nor in any sense as a definitive list of the greatest figures of the 20th century. It aims to provide a human rendering, capturing from unexpected angles a group of unconnected yet exceptional characters, as Cooke experienced them, whose stories can teach us much about both human nature and the nature of the past century.