Why, you may ask, am I seeing so many articles about the "Titanic"? It's because April 14 is the 100th anniversary of that North Atlantic tragedy, which killed 1,517 of the ship's 2,240 occupants. I'm reading a book called "Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From" by Richard Davenport-Hines and I highly recommend it: it's beautifully written and thoroughly researched and I've found only two typos so far (and, oddly, in the same line: "Meadeville, Pennylvania"). As you might guess from the title, the author focuses on the lives of the people involved in the tragedy and also does a riveting job describing the night of the accident and the short- and long-term repercussions it had around the world.
"Downton Abbey" fans will recall the pivotal role that the sinking of the "Titanic" plays in the plot: it kills off a key heir. Appropriately enough, there's a testimonial on the book jacket from Julian Fellowes, the creator and executive producer of "Downton Abbey": "An astonishing work of meticulous research, which allows us to know, in painful detail, the men and women on that fateful voyage. Even now, a hundred years later, Mr. Davenport-Hines finds a new and heartbreaking story to tell."
No comments:
Post a Comment