内维尔·舒特

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 to protect his engineering career from inferences by his employers (Vickers) or from fellow engineers that he was "not a serious person" or from potentially adverse publicity in connection with his novels, which included On the Beach and A Town Like Alice.

Early life

Shute was born at 16 Somerset Road, Ealing (which was then in Middlesex), in the tall and thin house described in his novel Trustee from the Toolroom. He was educated at the Dragon School, Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford; he graduated from Oxford in 1922 with a third-class degree in engineering science.

Shute was the son of Arthur Hamilton Norway and his wife Mary Louisa Gadsden.……

Career in aviation

An aeronautical engineer as well as a pilot, Shute began his engineering career with the de Havilland Aircraft Company. He used his pen-name as an author to protect his engineering career from any potentially adverse publicity in connection with his novels.

Second World War

By the outbreak of the Second World War, Shute was a rising novelist. Even as war seemed imminent he was working on military projects with his former boss at Vickers, Sir Dennistoun Burney. He was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) 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.……

Literary career

Shute's first novel, Stephen Morris, was written in 1923, but not published until 1961 (with its 1924 sequel, Pilotage).

His first published novel was Marazan, which came out in 1926. After that he averaged one novel every two years until the 1950s, with the exception of a six-year hiatus while he was establishing his own aircraft construction company, Airspeed Ltd.……

Activities after the war

In 1948, Shute flew his own Percival Proctor aeroplane to Australia and back, accompanied by the writer James Riddell, who published a book, Flight of Fancy, based on the trip, in 1950.

On his return, after complaining that 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.……

Honours

Norway Road and Nevil Shute Road at Portsmouth Airport, Hampshire were both named after him. Shute Avenue in Berwick, Victoria was named after him, when the farm used for filming the 1959 film On the Beach was subdivided for housing.

The public library in Alice Springs, Northern Territory is the Nevil Shute Memorial Library.

In the Readers' List of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th century, A Town Like Alice came in at number 17, Trustee from the Toolroom at 27, and On the Beach at 56.

Works

Stephen Morris (1923, republished in 1961 with Pilotage)

Pilotage (1924, republished in 1961 with Stephen Morris)

Marazan (1926)

So Disdained (1928). Also published as ‘The Mysterious Aviator’

Lonely Road (1932)

Ruined City (1938, U.S. title: Kindling)

What Happened to the Corbetts (1938, U.S. title: Ordeal)

An Old Captivity (1940)

Landfall: A Channel Story (1940)

Pied Piper (1942)

Most Secret (1942, published 1945)

Pastoral (1944)

Vinland the Good (film script, 1946)

The Seafarers (1946–7)