Books, TV series and movie re-release planned to mark Titanic centenary

A new book promises a fresh look at the lost liner: a social history of those who worked and travelled on the ship.

On April 14, it will be 100 years since the "unsinkable" ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage, sending more than 1,500 people to their doom in the freezing Atlantic Ocean. To mark the centenary, a major television series by Julian Fellowes, billed as "Downton Abbey On Sea", has been commissioned and James Cameron's billion dollar-grossing film will enjoy a re-release in retrofitted 3D. And there's also a plethora of new books promising a fresh look at the sunken liner, the extraordinary stories of those who made it back to dry land and, somewhat intriguingly, "how to survive the sinking of the Titanic" (it helped, it transpires, if you were the chairman of the company that launched the ship).

One of those books, though, not only boasts praise from Fellowes on the jacket - "an astonishing work ... he finds a new and heartbreaking story to tell" - but stands out from the crowd by virtue of its focus. Titanic Lives by Richard Davenport-Hines does movingly chronicle the last moments of the ship in its final chapters, but it's more of a social history of those who made, funded, worked and travelled on the ship. As its subtitle suggests, "migrants and millionaires, conmen and crew" perished as the ship went down.

But the Titanic is not the only - or the biggest - vessel to have met disaster. The MV Dona Paz (Philippines, 1987) and MV Joola (Senegal, 2002) have all sunk since, with greater loss of life. None of them, though, have inspired a film which, until Avatar, was the most successful movie made.

"There's the fact that it was, at the time, the largest and most luxurious liner ever built, and it sinks on its maiden voyage, but I prefer to think it's because all human life was on-board," says Davenport-Hines. "The story of the Titanic is full of personal dramas, but set within an event that was absolutely global - there were literally people from every inhabited continent. So I was writing a history book but it felt more like a novel. I found myself writing about human motive and impulse, loyalty and betrayal." And perhaps it's the desire to empathise with first-class passengers who were treating themselves to a journey on a "floating Ritz", or third-class hopefuls desperate to make a new life for themselves in America, that has compelled people to book on the frankly bizarre "Titanic Memorial Cruise" in April.

Those willing to pay upwards of £3,350 (Dh18,850) can "reserve their place in history" by setting sail from Southampton towards the exact co-ordinates of where the boat met its fateful end. Apparently, there's time in the cruise itinerary for "reflection" or "to move on". Davenport-Hines won't be sailing with them. But he can understand the fascination.

"Initially, I think the intrigue came with the fact that there were some incredibly rich and famous people on board who lost their lives. Members of the billionaire Astor and Guggenheim families were killed in their prime. But the stories of ordinary people are so upsetting, too. Whole families were wiped out. The example which really always gets me is Rhoda Abbot, the wife of an American boxer who had, appallingly, been practising on her. So she left him and travelled back to England but found her children couldn't settle. Anyway, the boys helped their mother into the lifeboat, but they couldn't manage to get in themselves. She watched them freeze to death and float off. How anyone can recover from that is just beyond me."

Which, of course, is reminiscent of a certain famous scene from James Cameron's Titanic. One might expect an eminent historian such as Davenport-Hines to be somewhat sniffy of the blockbuster movie, but surprisingly, he's a fan.

"As entertainment, the film is great fun. I was in floods of tears the first time I saw it - everyone wants to be loved in the way that Leonardo DiCaprio loves Kate Winslet, don't they? It's compelling stuff. But yes, it's full of stark simplifications. It romanticises poverty. All rich people are defined as snobbish, selfish and unimaginative and all poor people as loveable rogues. And the reality was that a lot of the first-class passengers did wait politely and patiently for their turn on the lifeboat. It also misses out the second-class passengers completely, who, on the whole, were aspirational, modest, unflashy. They have most of the human virtues one would want. They are nice people. That was what I was more concerned with getting right."

And of course, Cameron's Titanic is a love story, not a history. Titanic Lives also does a magnificent job of chronicling the pioneering, impatient, "go faster" spirit of the age which, Davenport-Hines says, led directly to Titanic's demise and can still be felt today.

"In the book, I call it a climax of deadly folly," he says. "The ship was going much too fast, and that's the beginning and the end of a story wrapped up in vanity and a contemptible arrogance from the people at the top. It was genuinely thought that Titanic was indestructible. And doesn't that have really rather remarkable parallels to the banking crisis we're experiencing now?"

Titanic Lives, Harper Press is out now