The Fremantle Diary

Walter Lord (1917-2002) was an acclaimed and bestselling author of literary nonfiction best known for his gripping and meticulously researched accounts of watershed historical events. Born in Baltimore, Lord went to work for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. After the war's end, Lord joined a New York advertising firm, and began writing nonfiction in his spare time. His first book was The Fremantle Diary (1954), a volume of Civil War diaries that became a surprising success. But it was Lord's next book, A Night to Remember (1955), that made him famous. The bestseller caused a new flurry of interest in the Titanic and inspired the 1958 film of the same name. Lord went on to use the book's interview-heavy format as a template for most of his following works, which included detailed reconstructions of the Pearl Harbor attack in Day of Infamy (1957), the battle of Midway in Incredible Victory (1967), and the integration of the University of Mississippi in The Past That Would Not Die (1965). In all, he published a dozen books. Lt. Col. James Fremantle, a British Army officer and notable witness to the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War, was born to a distinguished military family on November 11, 1835. He was commissioned into the British Army in 1852 after graduating from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and received his first promotion a year later, continuing with the trend until he held the rank of captain of his regiment and lieutenant colonel in 1860 at the age of twenty-five. He left England on March 2, 1863, to tour the American South, dutifully recording his observations in his diary, from which came Three Months in the Southern States, a book on his experiences in the Confederate States of America. This was later revised by historian Walter Lord and published as The Fremantle Diary in 1952. Fremantle ended his career in January 1984 as the Governor of Malta, returning to Great Britain in 1899 and being appointed a Knight of Grace of the Order of St. John in March 1900. He died of asthma complications on September 25, 1901, in Cowes Castle, Isle of Wight, England, at the age of sixty-five.