Nevil Shute Norway, 17 January 1899–12 January 1960, was an English novelist and an aeronautical engineer who later settled in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name to guard his engineering career from inferences by his employers (Vickers) or by 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.

Where did Nevil Shute live?

Shute was born in Somerset Road, Ealing (then in Middlesex), in the 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.

Early Life and Family

Shute was the son of Arthur Hamilton Norway, head of the Post Office in Ireland before the First World War, based at the General Post Office, Dublin, at the time of the Easter Rising in 1916, and his wife Mary Louisa Gadsden. Shute himself was later commended for his services as a stretcher-bearer during the rising. His grandmother, Georgina Norway, was a novelist.

Shute was trained as a gunner at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and he attended there. During the First World War, Shute was a passed-over man for a commission in the Royal Flying Corps, having been informed that he had a stammer and the RFC could not have men who stammered.

August 1918 saw him enlist as a private soldier in the ranks of the Suffolk Regiment, during which he guarded the Isle of Grain in the Thames Estuary and attended military funeral parties in Kent with other soldiers during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Aviation Career

An aeronautical engineer besides becoming a pilot, Shute started his engineering career with de Havilland Aircraft Company. He wrote under the pen name as an author to keep his engineering career clear from any negative publicity relating to his novels.

He soon became frustrated with the lack of opportunities for advancement and joined Vickers Ltd. in 1924, working on airships as Chief Calculator (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.

The R100 was a prototype for passenger-carrying airships that would serve the needs of Britain’s empire. The government-funded but privately developed R100 completed a 1930 round trip to Canada. While in Canada, it made trips from Montreal to Ottawa, Toronto, and Niagara Falls. The fatal 1930 crash near Beauvais, France, of its government-developed counterpart R101 ended British interest in dirigibles. The R100 was immediately grounded and subsequently scrapped.

How did Nevil Shute’s engineering background influence his role during the Second World War?

By the start of the Second World War, Shute was an up-and-coming novelist. Even as war looked inevitable, he was working on military projects with his former boss at Vickers, Sir Dennistoun Burney. He was commissioned into the Royal Naval 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 achieved the “dizzy 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.”.

So he ended up in the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development. There he was a head of engineering, working on secret weapons such as Panjandrum, a job that appealed to the engineer in him. He also developed the Rocket Spear, an anti-submarine missile with a fluted cast iron head.

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. He published a novel every other year through the 1950s, then stopped for six years when he started his company, Airspeed Ltd., specializing in aircraft construction. 

His popularity grew steadily after each book sold, but considerably more with On the Beach, which he published for the third book from the last in 1957.

The style of Shute’s novels is unpretentiously simple and highly readable. The lines of the plot are easily defined. If there is any romantic element to the story, sex is rarely referred to in direct terms. Many of the stories are preceded by a narrator who is not a character in the story itself.

The most persistent theme in Shute’s novels is the dignity of work, from the Spanish bar hostess in the Balkans (Ruined City) to the brilliant but unworldly boffin (No Highway). His novels can be divided into three main categories: early pre-war flying adventures; Second World War stories; and Australian stories.

Awards and Honors

Both Norway Road and Nevil Shute Road at Portsmouth Airport, Hampshire, were 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, published 1961, ISBN 1-84232-297-4 with Pilotage). A young pilot accepts a mission that is ambitious and risky.
• Pilotage (1924, published 1961): continuation of Stephen Morris.
• Marazan, 1926, ISBN 1-84232-265-6. Prisoner rescues pilot whose aircraft crashes; he helps the prisoner bring down narcotics syndicate.
• So Disdained (1928), ISBN 1-84232-294-X. Published in the U.S. as The Mysterious Aviator, and written soon after the General Strike of 1926, it reflected the debate in British society about socialism.
• Lonely Road (1932) In this novel, there are conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, and it is an experiment in writing styles.