The story of the service between Britain and Australia operated by the P & O and Orient Line between 1852 and 1984, this book is didvided into two sections. The first half is a narrative of the development of shipping service to Australia, and their eventual decline and the transfer into cruising during the 1970s and 1980s. The second half provides a full description of the career of each of the liners operated by both companies on the Australian trade. There are numerous pictures of the liners, including interior shots, and a section of colour photographs.This book was published under the pseudonym Malcolm R Gordon, due to a dispute between author and publisher over the pictures originally included in the layout. The author went to great lengths to secure previously unpublished photographs for the book, but the publisher decided to purchase a quantity of standard pictures from the P & O archive in London, which were then used through the book. As these pictures greatly reduced the quality and interest of the book, the author decided not to be directly identified with it, hence the use of a pseudonym. However, shortly before printing began, the author was allowed to replace most of the pictures with those he had collected, and the book thus ended up the way he wanted it, but by then it was too late to change back to his own name on the cover.