The author Nevil Shute was many things in his varied life other than a much loved writer, who can forget classics like The Far Country or A Town like Alice. Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 1899 – 12 January 1960) was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name.
Shute was the son of Arthur Hamilton Norway, who became head of the Post office in Ireland before the First World War and was based at the General Post Office, Dublin in 1916 at the time of the Easter Rising, and his wife Mary Louisa Gadsden. Shute himself was later commended for his role as a stretcher-bearer during the rising.
Nevil’s older brother Fred was killed in 1916 in France. In 1917 Shute attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and trained as a gunner. He was unable to take up a commission in the Royal Flying Corps in the 1st World War, which he believed was because of his stammer. He served as a soldier in the Suffolk Regiment enlisting in the ranks in August 1918. He guarded the Isle of Grain in the Thames Estuary, and served in military funeral parties in Kent during the 1918 flu pandemic.
An aeronautical engineer as well as a pilot, Shute began his engineering career with the de Havilland Aircraft Company However due to lack of advancement he took a position in 1924 with Vickers Ltd, where he was involved with the development of airships working as Chief Calculator or stress engineer on the R100 airship project for the Vickers subsidiary Airship Guarantee Company. In 1929, he was promoted to deputy chief engineer of the R100 project under Barnes Wallis. When Wallis left the project, Shute became the chief engineer. Due to the bad crash of the Government sponsored R101 the R100 project was scrapped in 1930.
Shute teamed up with the talented de Havilland-trained designer A. Hessel Tiltman to found the aircraft construction company Airspeed Ltd. A site was available in a former trolleybus garage on Piccadilly, York. Despite early setbacks, Airspeed Limited eventually gained recognition when its Envoy aircraft was chosen for the King’s Flight. With the approach of World War Two a military version of the Envoy was developed, to be called the Airspeed Oxford. The Oxford became the standard advanced multi-engine trainer for the RAF and British Commonwealth, with over 8,500 being built.
By the time of the Second World War he had written seven novels six of which had been published in 1931 he married Frances Mary Heaton. With the outbreak of was Shute was commissioned into the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a sub-lieutenant, having joined as an ‘elderly yachtsman’ and expected to be in charge of a drifter or minesweeper, but after two days he was asked about his career and technical experience. He reached the rank of lieutenant commander, knowing nothing about ‘Sunday Divisions’ and secretly fearing when he went on a little ship that he would be the senior naval officer and ‘have to do something.’ He ended up in the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapon Development. There he was a head of engineering, working on secret weapons a job that appealed to the engineer in him. He developed the Rocket Spear an anti-submarine missile with a fluted cast iron head. After the first U-boat was sunk by it, Charles Goodeve (the Canadian chemist who was instrumental in developing the ‘hedgehog antisubmarine depth charge system among other naval applications) sent him a message concluding ‘I am particularly pleased as it fully substantiates the foresight you showed in pushing this in its early stages. My congratulations.’
After the war concerned about what he saw as he ‘felt oppressed by British taxation’, he decided that he and his family would move to Australia. In 1950, he settled with his wife and two daughters on farmland at Langwarrin south-east of Melbourne. Although he intended to remain in Australia, he did not apply for Australian Citizenship which was at that time a mere formality because he was a British Citizen In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of the world’s best-selling novelists. Between 1956 and 1958 in Australia, he took up car racing as a hobby, driving a white Jaguar XK 140. Some of this experience found its way into his 1957 book On the Beach. He purchased the XK 140 from a dealer in Melbourne; Victoria. He then entered it in several club races in the Melbourne area. He justified the purchase as research for On the Beach. His wife Frances also took the wheel of the Jag in several events. However the character John Osborne in the book races a Ferrari but against Jaguars and other makes and wins the final race before the radioactive dust cloud arrives and obliterates life on earth. Several drivers are killed in the race driving too fast in reality committing suicide rather than face radiation sickness and death. Osborne himself commits suicide in his garage sitting in his beloved Ferrari.
-Shute at the wheel of his Jaguar XK 140 probably before a race as he is not wearing a helmet.
-It’s a Ferrari.
-Does it run?
-Does it run! She won the Grand Prix last year. I bought it from Simonelli’s widow. Paid her a hundred quid for it.
-What are you going to do with it?
-Race it, of course—- Exchange between Moria (Ava Gardner) and Julian (Fred Astaire) from
the 1959 film On the Beach
Two of my books have a motor racing flavour the Father Miller Mysteries ‘The Serpent and the Cross’ and ‘Shadows Washed in Blood.’
