Cooke’s Tour of TV Drama Nearing Finish : Television: The host of PBS’ ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ will retire in November to write a book and work on his BBC radio program.

Alistair Cooke, the 83-year-old host of PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre” series, will retire from the show at the end of November.

Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of “Masterpiece Theatre,” told television critics gathered in Los Angeles Tuesday that Cooke wrote her a letter last month, indicating his intention to leave the acclaimed drama series.

Cooke, who has hosted the anthology program since its inception in 1971, said in a statement released by PBS that he plans to write a book and work on his 46-year-old BBC radio program.

“I have been promising my publisher a book for the past two years and I must get to it,” Cooke said. “The rest of my declining energies I want to devote to the thing I most love doing: the weekly BBC ‘Letter From America.’ ”

A replacement has not yet been hired, Eaton said. Although the programs shown on “Masterpiece Theatre” are typically based on works of literature or history, and Cooke was a lifetime writer and journalist, she said that the new host will not necessarily be a writer or an intellectual.

Eaton also said that even though the program is watched mostly by people over 55, a decision had not been made on the proper age for a new host.

“We’re not limiting ourselves in any way in our search for a new host,” she said. “These are very, very, very big shoes to fill.”

Eaton said that after Nov. 29, when Cooke’s last program is slated to air, “Masterpiece Theatre” probably will be without a host for a while.

Cooke was born and raised in Manchester, England, and came to the United States in 1932 to study at Yale University. Soon after, he began his BBC radio program, which is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running radio show in history. He was a foreign correspondent for the Times of London and the Manchester Guardian, two of England’s major newspapers.

In the early 1970s, Cooke came to PBS with “America: A Personal History,” a 13-week series that garnered five Emmy Awards and led to a book, “Alistair Cooke’s America.”

He is an accomplished jazz pianist and an avid golfer, according to Eaton, and he intends to continue those pursuits after leaving “Masterpiece Theatre.”

In addition to the announcement about Cooke, Eaton released fall schedules for “Masterpiece Theatre” and “Mystery!,” both of which are funded by Mobil Corp.

The mostly British offerings on “Masterpiece Theatre” include Alvin Rakoff’s film “The Best of Friends,” which stars Sir John Gielgud, Dame Wendy Hiller and Patrick McGoohan as intellectuals Sir Sydney Cockerell, Dame Laurentia McLachlan and George Bernard Shaw.

Another production, “Memento Mori,” stars Maggie Smith in an adaptation of Muriel Spark’s story of a group of elderly friends. The season opens in October with “A Question of Attribution,” a BBC production about Sir Anthony Blunt, the queen’s personal art curator who was a Soviet spy. Two monologue-style programs, “In My Defense,” about a young woman’s mercy killing of her terminally ill mother, and “A Chip in the Sugar,” about a middle-aged man’s relationship with his mother, will air together later in the season.

The season will close with the BBC production of “The Secret Agent,” starring David Suchet in Joseph Conrad’s novel about a European anarchist who is a double spy for Britain and the Soviet Union.

According to Eaton, most of the season’s programs deal with questions of aging. “The Best of Friends” and “Memento Mori,” for example, feature actors in their 80s. But she said that despite the program’s older audience, the collection of stories about older people was coincidence.

On “Mystery!,” whose season begins Aug. 27, viewers will see Jeremy Brett in new Sherlock Holmes stories, including the season opener, “The Disappearance of Lady Carfax,” and new stories featuring Agatha Christie’s character, Hercule Poirot. A new series will star Michael Gambon as Chief Inspector Maigret of the Paris police, a character from novels by Georges Simenon.