Women and Children First!

It’s been a very busy period for CMCI’s resident Titanic expert Dr Richard Howells. First, the Centenary Edition of his monograph The Myth of the Titanic has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan’s scholarly division. This is an updated and expanded version of the 1999 original, and is available for the first time in paperback. See: http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=524880

Second, his peer reviewed article about 100 years of films about the Titanic appeared in the March 2012 edition of The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. See Richard Howells, ‘One Hundred Years of the Titanic on Film’, in The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Volume 32, number 1, March 2012, pp. 73-93. ISSN 0143-9685, DOI 10.1080/01439685.2012.648054

Third, he was invited to contribute to The Public Domain Review (others of their writers include Julian Barnes and Lucy Worsley), and his illustrated article: ‘The Unsinkable Myth’ can now be read at: http://publicdomainreview.org/2012/04/11/the-unsinkable-myth/

Fourth, he was interviewed by BBC news about films of the Titanic and he is included in the article ‘Five Myths About the Titanic Spread by Film’ at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17515305 This article has now been translated and re-produced worldwide.

And fifth, he was a live guest on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Broadcasting House’ magazine programme on Easter Sunday morning. He, presenter Paddy O’Connell and Cambridge University historian Dr Lucy Delap discussed chivalry and the concept of ‘women and children first’ as the liner hit an iceberg 100 years ago this week.

But sixth, although Dr Howells is happy to count his recent publications and media appearances on the Titanic, he is keen to stress that he is not one of those ‘Titanoraks’ who likes to count the number of rivets in (for example) lifeboat 12. As he will tell anyone who will listen, his concern is with representations of the Titanic in visual and popular culture; he leaves the knotty question of the rivets on the historical ship to others.