**WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY 2012** The strange and fascinating story of the owner of the Titanic, J. Bruce Ismay, the man who jumped ship 'Beautifully written, and beautifully deconstructed' Sunday Times 'Wonderfully rich and multi-layered . . . Full of fascinating details . . . Every sentence crackles with intelligence' Mail on SundayAs the Titanic sinks on that fateful day in April 1912, a thousand men prepared to die. J. Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner and inheritor of the White Star fortune, however, jumps into a lifeboat with the women and children and rows away to safety. Publicly reviled as a coward, Ismay became, according to one headline, 'The Most Talked-of Man in the World' and the first victim of a press hate campaign. His reputation never recovered and while other survivors were piecing together their accounts, Ismay never spoke of his beloved ship again. With the help of that great narrator of the sea, Joseph Conrad, whose Lord Jim so uncannily foretold Ismay's fate, Frances Wilson explores the reasons behind Ismay's jump, his desperate need to make sense of the horror of it all, and to find a way of living with ignominy. Wilson's biography of Ismay depicts the indelible stain of public disrepute and a life led in the aftermath of seismic disaster.

The strange and fascinating story of the owner of the Titanic, J. Bruce Ismay, the man who jumped ship

About the Author
Frances Wilson is a critic, journalist and the author of three works of non-fiction, Literary Seductions, The Courtesan's Revenge and The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, which won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 2009. She lives in London with her daughter.

Reviews
Beautifully written, and beautifully deconstructed * Sunday Times *
A gripping study - part reportage, part biography, part literary criticism - of the more intimate ramifications of a disaster which still haunts the public imagination * Sunday Telegraph *
Wonderfully rich and multi-layered ... Full of fascinating details ... It is one of the few works of recent non-fiction that would benefit from a second, or even a third reading. Every sentence crackles with intelligence * Mail on Sunday *
Masterful and timely * Daily Telegraph *
An unusual and creative book ... in the end, the subject of this fascinating book is not just historical or biographical uncertainty, but psychological and moral ambiguity * Guardian *
Wilson's biography is beautifully written and beautifully constructed * Sunday Times *


Awards
Winner of Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2012.



Book Information
ISBN 9781408828151
Author Frances Wilson
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 290g