LONDON: A hand-written letter found on the body of a man killed in the sinking of the Titanic is expected to fetch up to £80,000 ($105,000) at auction on Saturday.
The letter, written by first-class passenger Alexander Oskar Holverson to his mother on embossed Titanic “on-board” stationary, describes his impressions of the palatial ship, praising the food and music.
“If all goes well we will arrive in New York Wednesday A.M.,” Holverson wrote the day before the ship’s fateful encounter with an iceberg.
Holverson was a Minnesota-born salesman, who was traveling on the ship with his wife, Mary Alice, who survived the sinking.
In the letter, he also describes his experiences rubbing shoulders with one of the ship’s most famous passengers.
“John Jacob Astor is on this ship,” he said of the American financier and real-estate investor, who was one of the world’s richest men at the time.
“He looks like any other human being even though he has millions of money. They sit out on deck with the rest of us.”
The letter is one of the last known to have survived the sinking — it still carries stains from its time in the Atlantic.
The Titanic was the largest ocean liner in service when it struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912, in the Atlantic while traveling from Southampton to New York. More than 1,500 people died.
The letter is being auctioned by the Holverson family at Henry Aldrige & Son auctioneers in the southern English town of Devizes.
($1 = 0.7601 pounds)
'If all goes well...' Titanic victim’s letter expected to sell for thousands
'If all goes well...' Titanic victim’s letter expected to sell for thousands
Arts festival’s decision to exclude Palestinian author spurs boycott
- A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival
SYDENY: A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as moves to curb antisemitism spur free speech concerns.
The shooting which killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14 sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by Daesh.
The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
FASTFACTS
• Abdel-Fattah responded, saying it was ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.’
• Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival.
Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
Among the boycotting authors, Kathy Lette wrote on social media the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah “sends a divisive and plainly discriminatory message that platforming Australian Palestinians is ‘culturally insensitive.'”
The Adelaide Festival said in a statement on Monday that three board members and the chairperson had resigned. The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex moment.”
a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision.
In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticized Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticized protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.
Albanese said last week a Royal Commission will consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia. Albanese said on Monday he would recall parliament next week to pass tougher hate speech laws.
On Monday, New South Wales state premier Chris Minns announced new rules that would allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls.
Minns said the new rules were prompted by the difficulty in closing a prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.
The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield said the rules were ill-considered and councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.
“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters.
