Book description
On 14th 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
first 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 Scottish
families. He paints a vivid portrait of an age in which class determined
the way you lived - and died. An outstanding piece of historical
detective work, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON 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. Christopher Ward is the grandson of
Jock Hume, at 21 the youngest member of the Titanic`s orchestra.
Christopher 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.
