(title page) Uncle Tom's Companions: Or, Facts Stranger Than Fiction. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Supported the electronic publication of this title.Īpex Data Services, Inc., LeeAnn Morawski and Natalia Smith After several chapters about his early life in Baltimore and even his time with the OSS in London and Paris, the rest of the chapters are dedicated to the research and writing of each of his books.| Buy DocSouth Books Uncle Tom's Companions: Or, Facts Stranger Than Fiction.īeing Startling Incidents in the Lives of Celebrated Fugitive Slaves:Įdwards, John Passmore, 1823-1911 Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895įunding from the National Endowment for the Humanities In the 1980s, Lawrence had recorded hours of interviews he had with Lord, in which he discussed his writing and life. In 2009, Jenny Lawrence edited and published The Way It Was: Walter Lord on His Life and Books. The Night Lives On: Thoughts, Theories and Revelations about the Titanic (1986).Historian David McCullough said of Lord after his death: 'He was one of the most generous and caring men I have ever known, and when I wanted to be a writer, he was a great help. Lord, who remained single his entire life, passed away on at the age of 84, after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease, at his home in Manhattan. Cameron's documentary film Ghosts of the Abyss (2003), was dedicated to the memory of Lord. In the following decade, Lord served as a consultant to director James Cameron during the filming of Titanic (1997). In his final years, Lord wrote another book on the Titanic, titled The Night Lives On: Thoughts, Theories and Revelations about the Titanic, published in 1986. Lord's great knowledge of the Titanic catastrophe made him famous, and he frequently lectured at meetings of the Historical Society of the Titanic. The historian tracked down 63 survivors of the Titanic and wrote a dramatic minute-by-minute reconstruction of the history of the sinking of the ocean liner during its maiden voyage. The book A Night to Remember, which was about the sinking of the Titanic, became a best seller in 1955 and was adapted twice for a television production in 1956 and film into a popular British film of the same name in 1958. It became a mild but surprising success in 1954, when Lord was completing A Night to Remember, a work that would earn him much popular impact. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York City, Lord published The Fremantle Diary, edited and annotated from the journals of the British officer and Confederate sympathizer, Arthur Fremantle, which he toured the South for three months in 1863. Shortly after working as an editor for the J. Lord wrote or edited 11 highly successful books on subjects as diverse as Pearl Harbor ( Day of Infamy, 1957), The Battle of Midway ( Incredible Victory, 1967), The Battle of the Alamo ( A Time to Stand, 1961), Battle of Baltimore ( The Dawn's Early Light, 1972), the exploration of the Arctic ( Peary to the Pole, 1963), America before the First World War ( The Good Years: From 1900 to the First World War, 1960), Coastwatchers ( Lonely Vigil, 1977), and the struggle for civil rights ( The Past That Would Not Die, 1965). Later, Lord returned to the Yale University, where he earned his law degree. He was the secretary of the agency when the war came to an end in 1945. During World War II, he was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, working on encryption and decryption of messages in London in 1942. Subsequently, Lord enrolled at Yale Law School, interrupting his studies to join the United States Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After his secondary studies at Gilman's School in Baltimore, studied history at Princeton University and graduated in 1939. In July 1926, at the age of 9, Lord traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, from New York to Cherbourg and Southampton, on the RMS Olympic, Titanic's sister ship. His grandfather, Richard Curzon Hoffman, was president of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company ('Old Bay Line') in the 1890s. His father, who was a lawyer, died when Lord was just three years old. Walter Lord was born in Baltimore, Maryland to John Walterhouse Lord and Henrietta (born Hoffman) on October 8, 1917.

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