A recent Economist article drew my attention to the “The Rest is History” podcast. I enjoyed multi-part series’ about Lord Byron and Martin Luther, as well as a one-parter about the Hapsburg monarchy.
With an eye to researching my long-term Sherlock Holmes / Isambard Kingdom Brunel pastiche, I am listening to their series on the Titanic. The first episode provides a bit of imagery that helps with understanding shipyards of the era and how they were perceived:
I saw churches of all dominations. Freemason, Orange lodges, wide streets, towering smokestacks, huge factories, crowded traffic. And out of the water, beyond the custom house, dimly seen through smoke and mist rose some huge shapeless thing which I found to be a shipbuilding yard where in 10,000 men were hammering iron and steel into great ocean liners… The noise of wheels and hoofs and cranks and spindles and steam hammers filled my ears and made my head ache.
The transcript leaves me a bit confused about the source of the quote. I think the transcript attributes it to Richard Davenport-Hines, but a full text search seems to place it in William Bulfin’s “Rambles in Eirinn.”
One of the main reasons it’s fun to have low-pressure writing projects like my Holmes pastiche and the STS-27/107 screenplay is that it both gives license and provides purpose for reading around the topic. “The Rest is History” is a nice resource for improving contextual understanding, and it’s a whole lot more pleasant to listen to during a bike ride than the news is.
