VOYAGE OF THE MIND

Noo Saro-Wiwa trails literature's great figures on board the Queen Mary 2 from London to New York

I'm standing on a balcony of the Queen Mary 2 cruise liner as it departs Southampton for a seven-day journey across the Atlantic, its movement so gentle as to be almost imperceptible. Oscar Wilde, who made the same voyage in 1882, described the experience as "uninteresting", the ocean having no "roar". But, far from obscuring such disparaging thoughts, Cunard displays Wilde's words on the QM2's upper deck as a testament to its long connection to the world of letters. Since Victorian times, the 182-year-old shipping line has embraced its status as the preferred means for creative figures to travel between Europe and America.

Though some, like Mark Twain, praised the passage, Charles Dickens was harder to please. Sailing from Liverpool to Boston on The Britannia, Cunard's earliest transatlantic ship, he described his stateroom as "a profoundly preposterous box". But, 22 years later, in 1864, he changed his tune, reporting that his trip on RMS Cuba was far more salubrious.