How can we connect the astonishing global impact of the extraordinary life and tragic death of the most famous ship in history with its apparently humble beginnings in an Irish industrial city?

Titanic: Culture and Calamity shows how the great ship as a vast symbol both of the Modern and the age-old power of catastrophe entered Western art, drama, poetry, fiction, and film, as well as popular culture and folklore. Also, how the disaster fulfilled many of the social tensions and anxieties of the era.

And for the first time, the mechanical genius that conceived and created this and other majestic liners is tracked back to the city of Belfast – which, it turns out, was a major player in the late Machine Age that made the world as we know it.