TITANIC - THE NORFOLK SURVIVORS
by John Balls
****
Published by Nostalgia Publications
ISBN: 0 947630 25 2
Binding: Softback
Pages: 96
Price: £5.99 $8US
Available from Titanic Incorporated
Quite a nice little addition to the Titanic Library, and a good deal of what From Mt. Lebanon to the Sea of Darkness should have been like. Perhaps the title is a little deceptive, a good proportion of the book details with the impact of the disaster in Norfolk, rather than the survivors, of which a mere 21 pages of the book deal with.
The author is to be congratulated on the brevity with which he retells the general Titanic story. He has identified his target area, and realised that another retelling of the disaster is not what the reader will be looking for. This is a refreshing and welcome realisation by an author.
Apart from the chapter on survivors there are sections on the press response, fundraising appeals, and myths surrounding the story of the ship. All of these are brief but interesting to the scholar.
I did feel greater emphasis could have been given to these survivors, and some of those who did not survive but were from Norfolk. The author obviously felt that this would take a great deal more research than he was prepared to commit to. One has to wonder if the book was rushed out to capitalise on the Cameron generated hysteria, but this is perhaps being a little too cynical.
I found the writing style a little annoying in places, it was crisp and easy to read, but I felt there was too much use of the exclamation (!) mark, of which I am not a fan. In a work such as this, which is factual, I do not feel that there is room for emotion, which is conveyed by such use of punctuation.
Of the several human interest books that have been written over the past few years, this is one of the better ones, certainly to be compared with 31 Norwegian Destinies, but not in the same league.
