And the Band Played On - Christopher Ward

May 31, 2011 marked a hundred years since the launch of the Titanic and this recent book tells one of the human stories behind the tragedy. I still find the subject utterly fascinating. If you share this fascination then you will find this book riveting.

In April 1912 the Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and sank. Fifteen hundred passengers and crew lost their lives. As the order to abandon ship was given, the orchestra took their instruments on deck and continued to play. They were still playing when the ship went down.
 The violinist, 21 year-old Jock Hume, knew that his fiancée, Mary, was expecting their child, the author's mother.
 One hundred years later, Christopher Ward reveals a dramatic story of love, loss and betrayal, and the catastrophic impact of Jock's death on two very different families. He paints a vivid portrait of an age in which class determined the way we lived - and died.

The book represents an outstanding piece of historical detective work, it is also a moving account of how the author's quest to learn more about his grandfather revealed the shocking truth about a family he thought he knew, a truth that had been hidden for nearly a hundred years.

 Author Christopher Ward is the grandson of Jock Hume, who at 21 was the youngest member of the Titanic`s orchestra. Like his grandfather, Ward was an early starter. He joined the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle-upon-Tyne aged 17, and moved to Merseyside to become the Daily Mirror`s Liverpool correspondent at the height of Beatlemania. In his early twenties, he moved to London, writing a column in the Mirror for more than ten years. At 38 he became Fleet Street’s then youngest editor when he was appointed editor of the Daily Express. He left, aged 42, to co-found Redwood, Europe`s first customer magazine agency, of which he is Chairman today. He lives in the Scottish Borders, seventy miles from Jock Hume’s birth place in Dumfries.

Published by Hodder & Stoughton - $39.99 RRP