Mark Chirnside writes with a passion about this most beautiful of ships, a ship that was the epitome of the four-funnelled liner.

This new book, evocatively illustrated with a magnificent collection of more than 300 photographs, begins with the establishment of routes around Europe and across the North Atlantic in the 1850s. Not until the Liverpool ship owner and engineer, Alfred Holt, developed high-pressure compound engines were coal-powered vessels able to steam further afield, to the Far East and Australia. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 cemented the dominance of the cargo liner and not until the appearance of the first container ship in the 1950s was that dominance threatened.

With its informative ... more