There are some reporters whose writing or broadcasts catch the essence of their subject. Richard and David Dimbleby fronting the BBC General Election coverage. Monty Don and Percy Thrower before him are the masters of the garden. Trooping the Colour has not been the same since Huw Wheldon retired. Kenneth Clark was civilisation. Jonathan Charles and Kate Adie had only to say good evening, and you knew there was a war somewhere. Nature, surely, did not exist before David Attenborough. And what Attenborough is to nature, so Michael Cockerell is to politics.