Words of the Titanic, ITV1, review Words of the Titanic (ITV1) as a documentary that told the story with archive footage and readings of the words of the survivors, and it was as glaringly obvious as a 10,000-tonne iceberg that this was a better way in which to mark the centenary. Back then letters and diaries were practically the only means of communication, so people got very good at writing them. Some of the prose here, read by actors of the calibre of Roger Allam and Richard E Grant, was so lucid and so apt that it made the drama that preceded it look like a second-year university skit. "The pleasure and comfort which all of us enjoyed upon this floating palace," wrote Colonel Archibald Gracie, a first-class passenger, "with its extraordinary provisions for such purposes, seemed an ominous feature to many of us, including myself, who felt it almost too good to last without some terrible retribution inflicted by the hand of an angry omnipotence."