Alistair Cooke asked for ashes to be scattered in Central Park

Alistair Cooke, the broadcaster and former Guardian journalist, wanted his ashes scattered over Central Park, New York, and asked that no funeral service should be held for him, it emerged yesterday.

"I should like my friends to stay home or join a neighbour, enjoy a drink and think pleasant thoughts of me," he said in his will, filed in a Manhattan court 11 days before he died last month at the age of 95.

All Cooke's BBC radio Letters from America stretching over 58 years, and much of his print journalism, were written in his rent-controlled 15th floor apartment overlooking Central Park.

In one of his letters, which were the longest-running programme on radio, he remarked how the park seemed to sparkle as he looked at it the day after the world-imperilling Cuban missile crisis was solved in 1962.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1202249,00.html