For a century and a half, the single most important sea lane in the world was the transatlantic route linking the Old World with the New. For three hundred years, sailing ships sufficed to carry cargoes and people, but the demands of Steam Age business and commerce demanded more regularity. Just as the steam engine had allowed railroads to replace the unpredictability of stagecoaches on land with dependable schedules, steamships promised to bring this reliability to crossing the Atlantic. This is where the story of the Cunard Line began. The greatest influence Cunard would ever have on world events would be the leading role during the last half of the 19th century, when the great migration of millions of emigrants transformed the populations of Europe, the United States, and Canada. Wars devastation came to the Cunard Line with WW1 and WW2, as the power of the German submarine fleet -- built with one purpose in mind, to sever the North Atlantic shipping lanes -- threatened Great Britains very existence. By 1963, more people chose to travel by airplane than by steamship -- and it was the beginning of the end. Sir Winston Churchill observed, "You came into great things by the accident of sea power... By an accident of air power, you will probably cease to exist."

This book documents the creation, from keel laying to christening, of one of the most ambitious passenger vessels of all time, Cunard Line's new flagship, the Queen Mary 2. The story of the Queen Mary 2 is told by noted maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham, whose engaging text takes us through the building of the ship and details its world-class amenities.

Stunning illustrations to colour in, charting the history and heritage of the Cunard Line

"With a fascinating mixture of maritime history and contemporary analysis, the author describes the history of the Cunard Line, before saying farewell to the QE2, which will retire to Dubai as a floating hotel in November 2009."--Global Books in Print.

Atlantic Kingdom pays tribute to the Americans who challenged Cunard, the shipping company that held a monopoly on North Atlantic trade routes in the nineteenth century. In an era when civilisation first grappled with large-scale technology and creative industries promised a new standard of living, competition for control over maritime trade was fierce. Cornelius Vanderbilt and P. T. Barnum were among those who battled like mythical gods for control of their domains. These titans of the Atlantic left behind them a wreckage of human lives, lost ships, and squandered fortunes in their failed bids for supremacy of the seas. This book is a clear, succinct, lively, and sure-handed evocation of American maritime enterprise at its zenith.

Why has jewellery and body adornment often been marginalized in studies of modernist art and design? This study explores the relationship between jewellery, modernism and modernity from the 'jazz age' to the second world war in order to challenge the view that these portable art forms have only a minor role to play in histories of modernism. From the masterworks of the Parisian jewellery houses to the film and photography of Man Ray, this study seeks to present jewellery in a new light, where issues of representation and display are considered to be as important in the creation of a modern 'jewellery culture' as the objects themselves. Drawing on material from museums, archives, contemporary journals, memoirs, literary and theoretical texts, this study shows how the emergence of modern jewellery began to seriously question conventional notions of body adornment.