The apparent lack of representations of the Titanic disaster in Britain between the start of the First World War and the end of the 1950s was due, not to a lack of interest, but to active resistance to such representations. Shipping interests, the press, government, and the public all opposed portrayals of the catastrophe, but their opposition depended much on the medium by which the sinking was to be represented, on the broader international context, and on the nature and status of individual memories of the events of 1912. Questions of fact, fiction, national prestige, and the ethics of representation dominated the first half century of the Titanic's cultural history in the United Kingdom.
