#walter lord

[scansfrommagazinesandbooks]

[tamayokny]

A call had been sent for Thomas Andrews, Managing Director of Harland & Wolff Shipyard. As the Titanic’s builder, Andrews was making the maiden voyage to iron out any kinks in the ship. If anybody could figure out the situation, here was the man. He was indeed a remarkable figure. As builder, he of course knew every detail about the Titanic. But there was so much more to him than that. Nothing was too great or too small for his attention.  He even seemed able to anticipate how the ship would react to any situation. He understood ships the way some men are supposed to understand horses. And he understood equally well the people who run ships. They all came to Andrews with their problems. One night it might be First Officer Murdoch, worried because he had been superseded by Chief Officer Wilde. The next it might be a couple of quarreling stewardesses who looked to Andrews as a sort of Supreme Court. This very evening Chief Baker Charles Joughin made him a special loaf of bread. So far, Andrews’ trip had been what might be expected. All day long he roamed the ship, taking volumes of notes. At 6:45 every evening he dressed for dinner, dining usually with old Dr. O’Loughlin, the ship’s surgeon, who also had a way with the stewardesses. And then back to his stateroom A-36, piled high with plans and charts and blueprints. There he would assemble his notes and work out his recommendations.

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

[alley-cat777]

Book Review: A Night to Remember by: Walter Lord

The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the “unsinkable ship” — perhaps man’s greatest engineering achievement — going down the first time it sailed. But it went beyond that. If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else? If wealth mean so little on this…

[intriguingpeoplebyangelafloyd]

A Night to Remember

WALTER LORD

1995

A Night to Remember is a 1955 non-fiction book by Walter Lord that tells the story of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. The book was hugely successful and is still considered a definitive resource about the Titanic.

#anighttoremember#walterlord#rmstitanic#titanic

[georgelthomas]

Book Review: A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

Book Review: A Night to Remember by Walter Lord #BloggerCommunity #BloggingCommunity #ReaderCommunity #ReadingCommunity #Reader #Read #WalterLord #ANightToRemember #Titanic #RMSTitanic #DisasterAtSea #Human #Survivors #BookReview #Review #Ship

Hi everyone! I hope you’re well. Today is Friday, and time for another review. Today I am reviewing A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. A Night to Remember was first published in 1955 by R & W Holt, and (my copy) is 209 pages long. Plot A Night to Remember is a historical non-fiction book that recounts the events leading up to and following the sinking of the luxury passenger liner RMS Titanic…

[lobokraken]

“Busco algo que sea muy inusual, que involucre a personas comunes atrapadas en situaciones extraordinarias.”

17/05  - 12/06  

[myhikari21things]

Read of A Night To Remember by Walter Lord (1955) (152pgs)

[jesse-pinko]

I know there’s a lot of material for us Walt-haters to work with but I still don’t think we’ve covered how much of a miracle it was that Skyler and the kids got out of there alive when he not only put a target on their backs but also did absolutely Fuck All to shield them from the danger he brought into their lives… like this man is constantly bringing up his family-he-loves-so-much-and-does-everything-for around incredibly dangerous people who will absolutely use that against him (and who also did not ask) bc he needs everyone to know he’s not like the other drug dealers and he needs to reassure himself of his lie that he’s doing this for his family and he needs to be seen as The Provider… he doesn’t call it quits even after his brother-in-law is almost assassinated bc of him and SKYLER is the one who insists they pay for Hank’s rehab w the blood money that almost got him killed while Walter waffles ab it and sulks bc she (demonstrably) thought of a better cover story than he ever could… every time he has a chance to back out of the business he doubles down and when he’s finally exposed and Saul points out that he’s throwing Skyler under the bus by going on the lam he skips town anyway and a neo-Nazi cult breaks into their home and threatens to kill their baby unless she agrees to withhold information from the police… you mean to tell me you have all of this moolah to throw around and you never once over the course of the series thought about hiring an armed guard to discreetly watch over your family 24/7?? Fuck you dude lol

[sellingsecrets]

It's time once again for me to post devastatingly hot and badly cropped photos of Lisa Ann Walter.

[tyulezhik]

Full pic🦇🦇🦇

[thearcherprentiss]

How is she doing this to me on a Tuesday afternoon

[badwolf-gallagher88]

Yes, having a crush on a fictional character is bad. But have you ever had a crush on a fictionalised version of a vaguely problematic historical figure??

[tamayokny]

At 12:05 AM--25 minutes after that bumping, grinding jar--Captain Smith ordered Chief Officer Wilde to uncover the boats ... First Officer Murdoch to muster the passengers ... Sixth Officer Moody to get out the list of boat assignments ... Fourth Officer Boxhall to wake up Second Officer Lightoller and Third Officer Pitman. The Captain himself then walked about 20 yard down the port side of the Boat Deck to the wireless shack.

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

[holyshitidontusethisanymore]

IF YOU ASKED BRBA CHARACTERS WHAT THEIR PRONOUNS WERE:

-

Walter: Well, because I am male, he/him/his would be theoretically correct in all appropriate circumstances

Walter 2-5: I'm a male, so what do you possibly think I would go by? Yeah, exactly.

Jesse: Pronouns? Seriously? The hell is a- Okay yknow what, I don't know, fucking straight or like whatever? Bitch.

Skyler: Oh, sweet of you to ask, she/her, darling

Walt jr: uhhh.. w-whats a pronoun again?

Hank: I'm a red-blooded American, republican man, what else the fuck I look like to you? Jesus christ, buddy

Marie: Pronouns? God, do I really look like a man that you had to ask such a thing?

Saul: Ha, while my pronouns would be he/him, my adjectives would be handsome/awe-inspiring, thanks for asking, sweet cheeks

Gus: My name is Gustavo, that is all you need to know

Mike: I'm not sure where you are going with this, so I'm not even gonna bother answering

Gale: Oh gee, he/him/his would be the best for me, thanks!

Todd: he/him/his/himself, I'm sure of it.. sorry I'm drawing a blank, what does this have to do with cooking meth?

Uncle Jack: Do.. you actually want to fucking die?

Lydia: Uhm.. the female ones I suppose? What kind of question even is that..

Badger: Uhhh.. shit! I know this one! Hold on let me think I swear I know the answer to this-

Skinny P: Uh I dunno yo.. shit um.. 27?

Tuco: beats the absolute shit out of you

[o-uncle-newt]

We don't talk enough about the Petherbridge/Walter adaptations of the Wimsey/Vane novels.

(Well, we probably talk EXACTLY enough about Gaudy Night, which is really pretty bad, but besides for that...)

(Sorry, just a warning, Richard Morant as Bunter is fine but I won't have much to say about him here. I just really like this picture.)

The casting is basically perfect, especially Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane. I no longer see the book character in any other way- the only notable difference is that in the book she's noted as having a deep voice, but Walter's has a distinctive enough tone that I think it works regardless. She is just so, so, so good- captures the character beautifully, sells everything she does whether mundane or ridiculous (probably the best/most realistic reaction of someone finding a body I have EVER seen in Have His Carcase), makes the most of every limited minute she's on screen in Strong Poison and leaves her mark every minute that she isn't... and she looks AMAZING doing all of it. Just perfect, could not imagine better casting.

Edward Petherbridge I don't hold up to that level of perfection- I think that, try as he might, he's not really able to capture Wimsey's dynamism (possibly because he's a bit too old for the role) and is a bit overly caricatured in many of his mannerisms. But overall he does a pretty good job, in addition to looking quite a lot like how I'd imagined Wimsey- but in particular, I think he does a really lovely job of selling a lot of the emotion that he has to convey in some scenes that feel like they SHOULDN'T be adaptable from the book- specifically the scenes of him and Harriet. Him proposing to Harriet, him being disappointed when she (completely reasonably) turns him down... those shouldn't work on screen with real humans rather than in Sayers's calculated prose, but it DOES work and in no small part because he's great at selling Wimsey's feelings as being genuine even when his actions seem over the top. And, of course, Harriet Walter sells her end of the scenes right back. All in all, I think I have mixed feelings about Petherbridge as Lord Peter Wimsey the detective, but I'm a fan of him as Peter, the man who has feelings for Harriet.

Overall, though, both are, I think, very successful in capturing these characters- the fact that they take these people who even in the book can sometimes push the boundaries of likeability (which to be clear, is part of what I love about reading them) and make them eminently watchable is a great achievement. And also, in addition to their really looking like their characters individually, they're very well matched as a pair in the way that one pictures them from the book. They're even of very similar height and build, which we know is canonically true from Gaudy Night, and thus at least a somewhat relevant element of their dynamic.

Now, the adaptations are very uneven, and that's even without talking about Gaudy Night because, while it has about as good a rendition of the punting scene as I think we were ever going to get, most of the rest of it is crap and massively expands on what I think are serious problems to Peter and Harriet's relationship that the series as a whole had (not to mention cutting the character of St George, which is a travesty). None of the adaptations are perfect, and mess with aspects of their relationship in negative ways- for example, the ending of Strong Poison is exactly backward in a really awful way. I'll get back to this.

But when the show gets the two of them right, it gets them RIGHT, even when it's adapting Sayers's text/creating new dialogue. There are scenes in this one that I love almost as much as the canon text, like this one:

I don't think any of this is in the book, and there are things that happen here that I don't think Sayers would have ever written. But at the same time, a combination of the dialogue and the actors makes it COMPLETELY believable as these two people, and it captures a moment that is just really key for Peter as he faces his limitations and his feelings- something that in the book is conveyed through a lot of internal narrative on Peter's part that would be impossible to adapt as is, but that in the world of the show needed to happen in a much more visual and narrative way. Not all of the dialogue that this series chooses to fill in those gaps works, but even when it doesn't the actors do their best to sell the heck out of it, and when the dialogue DOES work it is seriously brilliant.

Probably my favorite of the adaptations is Have His Carcase, and scenes like this one are a big part of the reason why:

They change the location, but otherwise it's EXTRAORDINARILY faithful to the equivalent scene in the book, and honestly it shouldn't have worked with real people doing it and yet it does. It's just acted perfectly, given just enough arch and silly humor (particularly with the spinning door) that we don't attempt to take it too seriously, while also conveying the relevant emotions so well. The actors in the scene through only their faces and ways of speaking convey subtext that Sayers, in the book, conveyed a lot later on as actual text in the characters' thoughts, and there's something pretty great about that.

Other Have His Carcase scenes are less good (the dance scene is mediocre at best, I think), but if there's another Have His Carcase scene that I think illustrates how great Walter and Petherbridge are at selling the human sides of their characters, it's That Argument- seen here:

The Argument is a pale imitation of that in the book- the one in the book is, in fact, probably unadaptable as is- but it is still just so good because the actors are so good at selling it. Walter is just brilliant in the role and utterly inhabits it while also imbuing it with her own spin, and makes us feel Harriet's pain- and Petherbridge, through some relatively subtle facial expressions and reactions, is able just as well to make US understand what all of this means to him and how he feels. It's actually really remarkable that, just like how Sayers writes a relationship dynamic that only feels like it works because she's the one who wrote it that very specific way, this scene feels like it only works because these two actors play it in this specific way. Could two other actors do it? Very possibly, but it would feel super different and I wonder if it would feel this authentic. (I do want to note though that this scene made me really wish that we'd seen a Frasier-era David Hyde Pierce in the role of a younger and spryer, but equally posh, witty, and vulnerable, Wimsey. It just gave me vibes of something that he'd do beautifully.)

Now, as I said above, this doesn't get EVERYTHING right. In fact, quite a lot of their relationship ends up going pretty wrong- as I think a major mistake is their throughline which emphasizes Peter's continued pursuit of Harriet as not just reiterating his interest to make it clear that he hasn't changed his mind, but actively taking advantage of moments and situations in a romantic sense, taking a much more specific role in engaging with her physically, commenting on her appearance, saying how difficult it is for him to NOT pursue her more, etc. It makes the whole thing feel a lot more cat-and-mouse rather than a budding relationship of equals, and one where Peter acknowledges the whole time that they HAVE to be equals for a) Harriet to feel comfortable with him and b) them to be good together. In fact, however good the Argument above is, it's kind of undercut by this very pattern- he makes the book's point about him treating his feelings like something out of a comic opera, but he also at that point in the story has had a few much more oppressively serious scenes with her that clearly make her uncomfortable- nothing like anything in a comic opera. It's like the show misses the point a little.

I think the place where this really starts is at the end of Strong Poison. (I could see an argument to be made that it starts earlier, in a few smaller nuances of their jailhouse scenes, but I like those enough that I choose not to read into them too much lol.) After what I think is a great addition to the final jailhouse scene (one that I loved so much I repurposed it for a fic)- "it's supposed to be about love, isn't it" and some excellent reactions from Petherbridge- Harriet goes to court, her charges are dismissed, and unlike in the book, when it's Wimsey who leaves first (which Eiluned and Sylvia point out is a sign of his decency in not waiting for Harriet to thank him), here Wimsey is the one who watches as Harriet rejects him and walks away from him- the beginning of the chase. But nothing about their relationship is meant to be a chase! It's so frustrating to watch as that proceeds to be a continuing issue to a limited degree in Have His Carcase (where it's at least balanced by enough good moments that it doesn't matter so much) and to a MASSIVE, genuinely uncomfortable degree in Gaudy Night.

The only praise I will give it is that while the punt scene in the book is unfilmable, I think this adaptation did its best here and it's pretty good.

I'm not going to spend much time talking about Gaudy Night otherwise, because I'd need all day for it and also I'd probably need to rewatch it to make sure I get the details right and I have zero interest in doing that, but the way that it has Wimsey imposing himself and his feelings/hopes on Harriet to a really ridiculous degree, in a way that he never, ever does in the book, is just so so discomfiting and makes me feel terrible for Harriet. She doesn't deserve that. If I recall correctly, in that scene at the dance at the beginning, she's so happy just being with him and then he's all "oh so this means you want to marry me" and she just droops. He's so aggressive!

And that's what makes the worst part so bad, because not only does this miniseries not depict Wimsey's apology as the book does- one of the best scenes in a book full of brilliant scenes- it would actually be weird if it did, because this show doesn't imply that there's ANYTHING for Wimsey to be apologizing for! In fact, unlike in the books where we see Wimsey growing and deconstructing the parts of himself that had been demanding of Harriet, in the series we only see him get more demanding- until finally he wins. It's honestly infuriating and I hate it- the actors do their best to sell it (and apparently they were given bad enough material that they actually had to rewrite some of it themselves, though I have mixed feelings about the results) but it is just massively disappointing. Basically the whole emotional journey between the two of them is not just neutered but twisted.

For all of my criticisms of the adaptations' all around approach to their relationship, I do have to reiterate- Walter and Petherbridge do a wonderful, wonderful job. (Especially Walter.) When they're given good material to work with, and even often when they aren't, they are able to sell it so well- and particularly in the case of Walter, I genuinely can't think of the character as anyone but her rendition now. She IS Harriet Vane for me. And, for all the flaws that the series has, that's something pretty dang special.

Anyway, for anyone who read through this whole thing and hasn't seen these adaptations, I DO recommend Strong Poison and Have His Carcase- but not Gaudy Night unless you're either really curious or a glutton for punishment. The first two, though, have very good supporting casts, are quite faithful plot wise (sometimes to a fault- another flaw is that they are really devoted to conveying the whole mystery with all its clues sometimes to the point of dragginess, but will drop sideplots like, for example, Parker and Mary- which is totally reasonable, but still vaguely disappointing as those sideplots tend to add some levity/characterization), and just generally are an overall good time. (Some standout characters for me are Miss Climpson in Strong Poison and Mrs Lefranc in Have His Carcase.) And, of course, the best part is seeing the little snippets of Peter and Harriet that come through- less so their journey, vs in the book where that's central, but so many scenes where we just see the two of them together as they are in that moment and it's so satisfying.

[rexnanorum]

Lost on vacation 🌴🌴🌴🌱

My contribution for week 2 of stricklake month... Shipwrecked!

On their way to a well earned vacation at a tropical island resort, Walter and Barbara were in a shipwreck and ended washed up on deserted tropical island...

Whereas Barbara is set to a more practical approach using the tools she has at her disposal to make themselves shelter, a fire and maybe (hopefully not, concerning her cooking skills) a meal, Walt seems to have already letting his wild side take over, fully channeling his inner Lord of the Flies 🪰 (his attire, at least, is heavily inspired by the 1963 British movie version... 😉).

But don't worry, all is well as long as there are no beasts (besides Walt of course) lurking in the dark. And I am sure being stranded on a tropical paradise can be quite fun too! A vac on the wild side of some kind... And, Walt still being Walt, he has at least some fitting travel reading at hand!

I deliberately chose a more sketchy look in this drawing to get the jungle feeling with the leaves an the lighting.  I give you also a version ony with them so you can see all the wacky little details I tried to give them...