The techie novels of Nevil Shute / Boing Boing Twitter / Facebook / RSS Last month I had a conversation with Dale Grover (co-founder of Maker Works in Ann Arbor, Michigan -- read his profile at Make ) about the late author Nevil Shute. Shute is best known for the novel On the Beach (about a dying Earth after a global nuclear war) but we discussed a lesser-known novel of Shute's called Trustee from the Toolroom , which I read five or six years ago and absolutely loved. Trustee from the Toolroom is a tremendously compelling and well-plotted adventure story from 1960 about a mild-mannered English columnist for a hobbyist magazine called Miniature Mechanic who is duty bound to recover a container of valuable jewels from his dead brother's wrecked yacht in the South Pacific. (Fun fact from Wikipedia : "Trustee from the Toolroom was voted #27 on the Modern Library Readers' list of the top 100 novels . The top ten in that poll, though, included four works by Ayn Rand and three by L.

Ron Hubbard -- according to David Ebershoff, Modern Library's publishing director, 'the voting population [was] skewed.'") During our chat, Dale told me he's read a bunch of Shute's other books, and he was kind enough to email me the next day with mini-reviews of them. I asked Dale if I could run his email on Boing Boing and he said OK. Here's what he wrote: You have started with what I think is Nevil Shute's best book, but there are some really, really good ones: A Town Like Alice No engineering, but a wonderful story about an English woman caught up in the Japanese invasion in Malaysia, then her transformation of a village and town later. It was made into a really well done mini series. (And a so-so version later on. Go for the long one, 6 hours but worth it.) Slide Rule Shute's autobiography. You knew he started out in aviation engineering? One of his first jobs was helping to design one of a pair of airships for the British government. (He went on to found an aviation company, and later in life he had a home machine shop and made model engines.) No Highway Another engineering one.

A "boffin" (nerd) in aviation R&D has to act in the real world on his scientific beliefs. Was made into a great movie (was available on YouTube in its entirety at one point, but I don't see it now), and soon after a great radio drama (should be available online), both starring Marlene Dietrich and Jimmie Stewart. All are highly recommended! The Far Country A sweet story (Shute had a romantic side), plus Shute was not happy about what was happening politically in England, and saw Australia (where he eventually moved) as offering the opportunities no longer possible in England. Round the Bend Aviation mechanic starts a religion -- Engine maintenance as soulcraft. Set in the mideast post WWII. The Chequerboard , Pastoral , Landfall , In the Wet -- all worth reading. And On the Beach is possibly his most well-known book for the powerful image of the results of a world-wide nuclear war. (It was made into a major movie, but I have not seen it.) It is not an upbeat story, though. Movie has some differences from the book that Shute did not like.

Shute's well-known trip to Australia by small plane is captured in Flight of Fancy by James Riddell. Bali is where Riddell lost his heart. There's some advantage in reading it after reading some of the books that came out of this flight -- A Town Like Alice, Round the Bend, The Chequerboard, In the Wet. (Aha -- that's where that scene came from.) It's on the outside looking in on Shute. Widely available used for about $15. Be sure to poke around on the website for the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation . They do loan out books and movies (I donated my copy of the mini-series of A Town Like Alice). And every few years they have an international gathering. Next one is in NZ, I think. Nevil Shute Nevil Shute ( 1899 - 1961 ) Nevil Shute Norway was born on 17 January 1899 in Ealing, London. After attending the Dragon School and Shrewsbury School, he studied Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as an aeronautical engineer and published his first novel, Marazan, in 1926.

In 1931 he married Frances Mary Heaton and they went on to have two daughters. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve where he worked on developing secret weapons. After the war he continued to write and settled in Australia where he lived until his death on 12 January 1960. His most celebrated novels include Pied Piper (1942), No Highway (1948), A Town Like Alice (1950) and On the Beach (1957). Nevil Shute: profile - Telegraph Books Nevil Shute: profile Nevile Shute worked with Barnes Wallis and once wrote a gripping novel about metal fatigue. As A Town Like Alice and other classic works are reprinted, Philip Hensher salutes the literary craftsman By Philip Hensher 6:30AM GMT 04 Dec 2009 As we head into the last winter of a Labour Government, in a country appallingly in debt and facing a bleak future, what are we going to read to pass the time? For decades, contemporary novelists have taken it for granted that their readers will be roughly Left-liberal.

They will be opposed with a passion to any remotely Right-wing views and unified in their hatred for, say, Margaret Thatcher, like medieval peasants around a sputtering fire. Things were not always so: step forward Nevil Shute. Vintage has put the collected works of Shute back into print – all 23 novels, written over four decades in the middle of the last century. The four best-known titles (A Town Like Alice, Requiem for a Wren, Pied Piper and On the Beach) were published in September, with the rest available on order, through print-on-demand. But there was such demand from bookshops that Vintage decided to do short print runs so every title would be available in the ordinary way. Vintage has struck a chord, and Shute is definitely back in fashion. He has some distinguished fans. When I mentioned him to a couple of novelist friends, I was surprised by their instant and unqualified enthusiasm. “Ooh, I think he’s wonderful,” Jenny Colgan said. “Proper handcrafted storytelling – you don’t get that any more.” Susan Hill marvelled at his “extraordinary ability to range over a large number of places, situations, countries, human types, never repeating himself”.

It was unexpected that women novelists in particular seemed to respond to Shute’s world. Candia McWilliam, who said she knew lots of women who were fans, told me that he “set a certain old-fashioned taste in terse unwordy chaps for several girls I know”. Novelists respect craft and tend not to be very concerned whether a novelist is on the “right” side of the argument, or about questions of political correctness or, indeed, personal niceness. Shute – real name, Nevil Shute Norway – was a writer from an unusual background. He was not a conventionally literary person at all. His daughter Shirley Norway, in a talk to the Nevil Shute Society, told how, late in life, he felt he ought to be better read and “spent the astronomical sum of £30 on books which he felt he ought to have read… I don’t think he read many of them.” His father, Arthur Hamilton Norway, was a writer of “rather dry books”, another daughter, Heather Mayfield, remarked on the same occasion: “Highways and Byways in Devon and Cornwall, History of the Post Office Packet Service”.

The young Norway became an engineer, taking a third-class degree from Balliol College, Oxford (the equivalent of a 2:1 today), and went to work for Vickers, the aircraft company, in the early Twenties. He worked on the R-100 airship as chief calculator alongside Barnes Wallis. It was the private industry equivalent of the government-funded R-101. Both the engineering basis of flight and the rivalry between private enterprise and public project fed his imagination, in unexpected ways, to the end of his life. There was another crucial element in his personality, which everyone who knew him commented on: his stammer. Many stammerers become withdrawn people. Shute’s daughter Shirley comments, with psychological acuity, that in his case, it was not a reluctance to express himself, but “a reluctance to let anybody else talk”, noting that he stammered when he lost his temper, as he apparently frequently did. The early novels, such as So Disdained (1928), often have a John Buchan-ish quality, updated to contemporary circumstances. In most of his later work there are, unusually for thrillers, no villains.

The heroes struggle against circumstances and, often, against a hostile political regime. In later novels, a dying and over-controlled England is frequently contrasted with Australia, a place where enterprise can lead to fortune and fulfilment. Shute acted on his beliefs: when Attlee was elected for a second time in 1950, he moved his family to Australia, where he remained. The opening section of The Far Country (1952) sets out his principles, contrasting a married couple in Australia, who have made a fortune, with their old aunt in England, impoverished and starving through the policies of the post-war state. The drive of personal enterprise against the best intentions of government is a constant theme. The celebrated A Town Like Alice (1950) doesn’t end with the reunification of the lovers: it presses forward to show the heroine establishing a manufacturing business, employing much of the town and boosting the local economy until it starts to become, indeed, a town like Alice Springs.

An intriguing but not entirely successful novel, In the Wet, published to coincide with the Queen’s coronation in 1953, contains a speculative sequence set in the Eighties, in which the Queen is wrested from the control of a socialist government by free-marketeer regimes and flown to the colonies. Shute’s last novel, the excellent Trustee from the Toolroom (1960), sustains the diatribe to the end. It starts with a rich couple who convert their savings into diamonds, conceal the jewels in a yacht and sail off to the United States to sell them away from the curiosity of the government. Their crime is “about the worst thing you can do, apart from murdering someone”, the novel asserts with a barely straight face. After their death in a tropical storm, the engineer brother of the woman goes after the diamonds and smuggles them back into the country in the innards of an engine. The last pages are a wonderful flourish of gleeful cheekiness. Shute doesn’t mention the new wealth, but ends thus: “He is perfectly, supremely happy” – a reference, presumably, to getting away with it at the government’s expense.

Shute’s pessimism about the effects of the small-minded dealings of politicians resulted in his most famous and resonant novel, On the Beach (1957), in which a city waits, defeated, for the end of the world, whiling away the remaining hours with suicidal sport. The colossal effect of On the Beach is interestingly foreshadowed by a pre-Second World War novel, What Happened to the Corbetts (1938). A devastating bombing raid on Southampton leads to food shortages and cholera, as well as psychological problems. Few novelists of the time had the capacity to think this one through. Henry Green in Party Going or George Orwell in Coming Up for Air allowed themselves to allude to the terrors to come, but could not or would not construct them in the detail that Shute commanded. The interest lies, in the oddest way, in the most uncompromising technical detail, the glamour of which Shute regarded with a respect bordering on awe.

Requiem for a Wren (1955) is mostly a love story, but the narrator can tell off the top of his head that if a sheep farm produced 716 bales of wool in a year, its annual income must be £130,000. Other novels, such as No Highway (1948), about the unpromising but in the event thrilling subject of metal fatigue, are only interesting when they become technical. One of the charms of Trustee from the Toolroom is the way the engineer brother, a writer for Miniature Mechanic magazine, is greeted like a celebrity by the various sailors, aviators and American millionaires he comes across as he voyages to Tahiti. Shute was an avid reader – “cover to cover”, his daughter Heather said – of Model Engineer magazine and here is his sincere tribute. This is boys’ own stuff, you might think, and Shute’s fascinating autobiography, Slide Rule, is about as sensitive and introspective as its title suggests. But the novels are beautifully written, knowledgeable, worldly men’s books that hold a surprising appeal to women, as I found.

There were novelists on the other side of the ideological divide who tried to cover a sort of Shute-ish territory – C P Snow, for instance. But Shute was a better technician and possessed a more authentic novelistic mastery. He is a sort of minor, but real, magician. Is it too much to ask that some enterprising publisher might now commission the full-dress autobiography that so adventurous a figure undoubtedly deserves? Nevil Shute’s novels are published by Vintage at £8.99 each Biography - Nevil Shute Norway - Australian Dictionary of Biography Australian Dictionary of Biography Tip: searches only the name field Tip: Use double quotes to search for a phrase by Julian Croft This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography , Volume 15, (MUP), 2000 Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960), writer and aeronautical engineer, was born on 17 January 1899 at Ealing, London, second child of Arthur Hamilton Norway, a clerk in the General Post Office, and his wife Mary Louisa, née Gadsden. In 1912 Arthur became secretary of the Post Office in Ireland.

Father and son had first-hand experience of the siege of its Dublin headquarters at Easter 1916. Educated in England at Lynam's (the Dragon) School, Oxford, and Shrewsbury School, Shropshire, Nevil suffered from a stammer which, though it lessened, was still noticeable late in life. It prevented him from being commissioned in the British Army in mid-1918 when he completed training at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He served (from August) in England as a private in the 1st Reserve Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, then entered Balliol College, Oxford (B.A., 1923), where he read engineering. From an early age Norway showed an intense interest in aeroplanes. While at Oxford he undertook unpaid work for the de Havilland Aircraft Co. in university vacations. He started regular employment with the firm in January 1923. During this time he learned to fly and began writing novels. His father had published several travel books with Macmillan & Co. Ltd at the turn of the century and his grandmother had written children's books.

Norway completed his first novel in 1923, and another in the following year, but neither was published. In 1924 he joined Vickers Ltd as chief calculator for the famous inventor (Sir) Barnes Wallis who was in charge of the design and construction of the rigid airship, R100. Norway's account in his autobiography, Slide Rule, of the six-year trials and tribulations of the competitive construction of the airships R100 and R101 (built by the government), and the subsequent disastrous crash of R101 in France on its maiden flight to India, revealed his narrative gifts and some of his major preoccupations as a writer—the hubris of governments, bureaucratic paralysis, and the betrayal of individual common sense by large organizations. As an antidote to the stress of the R100 project, Norway began writing regularly in his spare time. He completed his third novel, Marazan, which was published by Cassell & Co. Ltd in 1926.

Sensing that his colleagues and Vickers might think that his writing compromised his commitment to his engineering work, he chose to publish as Nevil Shute (a truncated version of his full name), as he did for all his subsequent writing. Despite the pressures of his daily work, Norway continued to write, and So Disdained was published in 1928. On 7 March 1931 at St Peter's parish church, Bromley, Kent, he married Frances Mary Heaton, a 28-year-old medical practitioner. That year Norway established his own aircraft construction company, Airspeed Ltd, which became one of the major aircraft-makers in Britain by the outbreak of World War II. So intense was the effort he put into the engineering and business sides of the company that The Lonely Road, published in 1932, marked the beginning of a publishing hiatus of six years. In 1938 Norway recognized that Airspeed was a different company from the one he had founded. The board asked him to resign with a generous settlement that enabled him to devote himself to full-time writing.

Ruined City appeared in 1938, followed by What Happened to the Corbetts (1939), An Old Captivity (1940), Landfall: A Channel Story (1940), Pied Piper (1942), Pastoral (1944) and Most Secret (1945). The productivity and commercial success which marked Norway's writing career was evident in this period. His books, mostly published by Heinemann Ltd in London, also sold well in the Dominions and in the United States of America, and his early apprenticeship had equipped him to write regularly and easily. His published advice to aspiring novelists often referred to writing as a craft and a business—of learning both the structural formulas and the marketing ploys for publishing success. In many ways his professional life as an engineer and businessman informed much of his writing practice. Commissioned lieutenant and promoted acting lieutenant commander, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, in 1940, he worked in the Admiralty's Miscellaneous Weapon Development Department. After World War II his work became even more commercially successful.

The Chequer Board (1947) preceded No Highway (1948), the subject of which—the problems of aircraft design and the effects of metal fatigue—was well-known to him. In 1948 Norway flew his own plane to Australia. Back home, he felt oppressed by British taxation and decided that he and his family would emigrate. With his wife and two daughters, he settled in 1950 on farmland at Langwarrin, south-east of Melbourne. His greatest successes dated from this time, and most of them had Australian settings: A Town Like Alice (1950), Round the Bend (1951), which Norway considered his most important work, The Far Country (1952) and In the Wet (1953). The last caused some controversy. Released in the coronation year, the novel is partly set in a future where the monarch seeks refuge in Australia from an unsympathetic British government. In 1954 he published Slide Rule which gave an account of his life to 1938.

Requiem for a Wren (1955), Beyond the Black Stump (1956) and his most famous book, On the Beach (1957), were followed by The Rainbow and the Rose (1958), Trustee from the Toolroom (1960) and Stephen Morris (1961), the last two published posthumously. Several of his novels were made into films, the most notable being A Town Like Alice (1956), starring Peter Finch , and On the Beach (1959), produced by Stanley Kramer. Described as a 'friendly, nervous, tweedy man . . . with the strong hands of an engineer', Norway died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 12 January 1960 in East Melbourne and was cremated; his wife and daughters survived him. Norway had few literary pretensions, and publicly confessed that he could not finish reading Patrick White's Voss. He believed that the subject matter for novels came from direct observation of ordinary people in their own settings.

An unambiguous morality of strong heroes and loyal heroines, combined with simple characterization, realistic settings alloyed with the fantastic, and exciting and well-told narratives were the basis of his success. His prose style was plain. If his novels seem ponderous to today's taste, they convey very well the last British imperialist vision of the Dominions, Australia in particular, as societies where English virtues might thrive, away from the decadence of postwar Britain. Select Bibliography J. Riddell, Flight of Fancy (Lond, 1950) G. Pawle, The Secret War, 1939-45 (Lond, 1956) J. Smith, Nevil Shute (Boston, 1976) C. Giffuni, Nevil Shute (Adel, 1988) Sun (Melbourne), 5 June 1954 Observer (London), 20 Dec 1959 Times (London) 13 Jan 1960 New York Times, 13 Jan 1960 Age (Melbourne), 25 Nov 1960.

Citation details Julian Croft, 'Norway, Nevil Shute (1899–1960)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 2000, accessed online 20 January 2017. This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15, (MUP), 2000 © Copyright Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2006-2017 Filmography Filmography Web Links LONELY ROAD (1936) "Lonely Road" is the first of Nevil Shute's novels to be made into a film. It was produced at Ealing Studios by Basil Dean, Associated Talking Pictures, directed by James Flood, and starred Clive Brook and Victoria Hopper, well known actor and actress of that period. In his autobiography, "Slide Rule", Nevil mentioned that he enjoyed watching the film being made. Several of the scenes were shot on a beach near where he lived. The film followed the book reasonably well right up to the end, where Nevil's tragedy was turned into a suggestion of "happily ever after".

In spite of the popularized ending, it is an entertaining film and a good example of British cinematography of that era. This film is also listed in several references under the alternate title of "Scotland Yard Commands". The library owes huge debts of gratitude to Shutist Derek Hill, and to Member of Parliament Richard Spring, for their key roles in obtaining this video tape from the British Film Institute. The tape was copied directly from a remastered 35mm film. "Lonely Road" is now available commercially on DVD and can be purchased from Amazon. It is also now available in the UK library (UK055B). LONELY ROAD (1968) This is the second version of Lonely Road and is, in many ways, superior to the first. It is a made-for-television BBC production dramatized by Elwyn Jones, directed by John Mathews, and starring John Gregson as Commander Malcolm Stevenson, Jayne Sofiano as the lovely Mollie Gordon, Paul Grist, as her brother Billy Gordon, Bernard Archard as Jenkinson, the urbane solicitor, Frederick Hall as the despicable Professor Ormsby, and Jerome Willis as the almost-equally-despicable Major Norman.

This version of Lonely Road sticks much closer to the book, and avoids several of the pitfalls of the first version, including the suggestion of a happy-ever-after ending. The written Lonely Road was a tragedy, and this version ends equally tragically. In addition, the quality of the film, made in 1968 as opposed to the 1936 version, is far superior. THE PIED PIPER (1942) "The Pied Piper" is the second of Nevil Shute's novels to be filmed. It was produced in the United states at 20th Century Fox by Nunnally Johnson, directed by Irving Pichel, and starred Monty Woolley, Anne Baxter, Otto Preminger, in perhaps his only acting role, and a very young Roddy McDowall, as one of the children led to safety through war torn Europe. This film, like the book, was pure propaganda against the Nazi war machine. Still, it is classic Nevil Shute - the epitome of an ordinary man, faced with extraordinary circumstances, and accomplishing extraordinary things.

"Pied Piper" is not available commercially, but it is available for loan through the UK and US Branches of the Foundation Lending Libraries on DVD and tape. LANDFALL (1948) "Landfall" is the second of two Nevil Shute wartime novels that were made into films, although it was not filmed until after the war. It was produced by Victor Skutezsky at Pathe Studios, directed by Ken Annakin, and starred Michael Denison, as the dashing young RAF pilot, and Patricia Plunkett, as the pure as the driven snow girlfriend, barmaid. The film closely follows the book, with the exception of one or two unnecessary twists, and a bit of hokey, period music thrown in. (Remember when almost all movies had at least one singing scene?) It is a good example of Nevil's view of wartime England's "ordinary people doing extraordinary things". It also has some very good shots of the Wellington Bomber which was designed by Barnes Wallis of R100 and Dambusters fame. The Foundation was fortunate to find a copy of "Landfall", still in the film can, at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom.

We were even more fortunate in that the curator there, Mr. John Herron, was kind enough to make a very good quality video tape of the original for the Foundation. "Landfall" is available on loan at any time through the US or UK Branches of the Foundation Lending Libraries, and can be purchased on Amazon (UK) NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY (1951) "No Highway in the Sky" is the film based on Nevil Shute's famous novel "No Highway", which predicted the effects of metal fatigue in modern aircraft and foretold the tragedy that befell British Comets several years later. It was produced by Louis D. Lighton at 20th Century Fox, and directed by Henry Kostner. It starred (rather improbably) James Stewart, as the eccentric Professor Theodore Honey, who predicted the disaster of the newly commissioned Reindeer aircraft, Marlene Dietrich as an aging film star, and Glynnis Johns, as the flight attendant who grew to love the eccentric Mr. Honey. This is more good period film making, with horrible special effects and a few very trite final scenes. However, it is vintage Shute, and well worth seeing.

The Foundation's copy of "No Highway in the Sky" is a commercial video, of very good quality. It is available on loan at any time through the US Branch of the Foundation Lending Library. It is also available for sale through Critic's Choice Video , 800-993-6357 A TOWN LIKE ALICE (1951) This version of "A Town Like Alice" was produced at Rank Films, directed by Jack Lee, and starred Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch. It might best be described as a film based on one half of a Nevil Shute novel. It is well done, but only covers the book through Jean's discovery that Joe Harmon is alive, and their first meeting thereafter in Australia. Their blossoming love, and the creation of 'a town like Alice' is not covered. Still, this is more vintage Shute and very worthwhile. The Foundation's copy of this version of "A Town Like Alice" is a commercial video, of very good quality. It is available on loan at any time through the US Branch of the Foundation Lending Library. It is also available for sale in Canada at Lear Media .

ON THE BEACH (1959) The first "On The Beach" is the film that made Nevil Shute a household word in the United States and elsewhere. It was produced by Stanley Kramer at United Artists, directed by Stanley Kramer, and starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astair, and Anthony Perkins. The story probably brought more dedicated readers to Nevil Shute than any of his other novels. It is also given credit for playing a major part in the international protest against nuclear weapons. In spite of its many accolades, Nevil Shute hated the film. He was enraged by its production to the extent that Shirley Norway believes his anger over the film hastened his death. Like all his best stories, "On The Beach" was about ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances, rising to the occasion, and behaving very well. The problem was that Nevil felt behaving very well included remaining true to one's dead spouse. In the book, Captain Dwight Towers refused to give in to his passion for the Australian beauty Moira, and she was above trying to seduce him into betraying his dead wife.

In the film, Towers, played by Gregory Peck, and Moira, played by Ava Gardner, left no doubt about whether or not their relationship was consummated. Nevil felt that this destroyed the central message of the book. Notwithstanding Nevil's dislike of the film, it is a classic, and the power of its message is as strong today as it ever was. The Foundation's copy of this version of "On The Beach" is a commercial video, of very good quality. It is available for loan through the US Branch of the Foundation Lending Library. It is also available for sale through Critic's Choice Video , 800-993-6357. Ava Gardner comments about shooting On The Beach . A TOWN LIKE ALICE (1980) The second version of "A Town Like Alice" was produced by Henry Crawford at the Australian Film Commission, Victoria, directed by David Stevens, and starred Helen Morse, Bryan Brown and Gordon Jackson. It is a five hour miniseries first shown on PBS Mobil Masterpiece Theater, and it is truly a masterpiece.

With the exception of a few changes and additions that most purists found to be unnecessary and distracting, it is true to the book, and to Nevil Shute's message. Most Shutists believe that it is the best dramatization ever based on a Nevil Shute novel. The Foundation's copy of this version of "A Town Like Alice" is a commercial video, of very good quality. It is also available for sale in Canada at Lear Media . THE FAR COUNTRY (1986) "The Far Country" is a Crawford Production, produced by John Barningham, directed by George Miller, and starred Michael York and Sigrid Thornton. It is not necessarily a bad film. It is just that it is far removed from the plot of Nevil Shute's book by that name, and it completely distorts Nevil's message. One of the essentials of Nevil Shute's novels that separates them from the writing of other popular novelists, is that Nevil never dealt with villains. He never set his hero/heroine against evil people. He set them against circumstances. In the film version of "The Far Country", every other character is turned into a bad guy that the hero must confront and best.

That might be good theater, but it isn't Nevil Shute. The Foundation's copy of " The Far Country" is a commercial video, of very good quality. It is available is available for loan through the US Branch of the Foundation Lending Library. It is also available for sale through Critic's Choice Video , 800-993-6357. CROSSING TO FREEDOM/PIED PIPER (1990) "Crossing to Freedom" is a television remake of "Pied Piper", produced at Proctor and Gamble Productions by Craig McNeil, directed by Norman Stone, and starred Peter O'Toole and Mare Winningham. Unlike most remakes, this one is worthwhile. Although it has the typically poor special effects that are to be found in many low budget, made for television films, the performances by Peter O'Toole and Mare Winningham make up for those shortcomings. This version is considerably different from the original but, like the original, it sticks to the story line and to Nevil Shute's message. The Foundation's copy of "Crossing to Freedom" was made from a commercial videotape of the film, and is of very good quality.

"Crossing to Freedom" is not available commercially, but it is available for loan through the UK and US Branches of the Foundation Lending Libraries. ON THE BEACH (2000) This version of "On The Beach" was produced in Australia at Southern Star Productions by John Edwards, directed by Russell Mulcahy, and starred, if that term may be used very loosely, Armand Assante, Rachel Ward, and Bryan Brown. There is nothing good that can be said about this production. If the first version of "On The Beach" distorted Nevil Shute's message, this attempt at a remake completely destroys it. If you want to see Armand Assante taking liberties with Rachel Ward while Bryan Brown looks on in anger, and the remainder of the Australian population behave like children whose puppy just got run over, this is the film for you. Otherwise, I would recommend a trip to the dentist for an evening's entertainment. The Foundation's copy of this version of "On The Beach" is a commercial video. In the unlikely event that any Shutist would like to watch it, it is available for loan through the US Branch of the Foundation Lending Library.

It is also available for sale through Critic's Choice Video , 800-993-6357. MISCELLANEOUS VIDEO TAPES In addition to the above films and television dramatizations, there is a fifteen- minute tape of The R-100 Airship in Canada. This tape was made from what appears to be an amateur motion picture film taken during the R-100's visit to Canada. It is not commercially available, but a copy is available for loan through the US Branch of the Foundation Lending Library. A video documentary of the 1999 Nevil Shute Centennial Celebration is also available for loan through the US Branch of the Foundation Lending Library, and available for sale through Paper Tiger - website is . International telephone number is 001-845-626-5354.

Copyright MMI - MMXVI Nevil Shute Foundation Neville Shute Neville Shute Nevil Shute [Norway] (1899 – 1960) By Carole Smith Neville Shute [1] Nevil Shute Norway is best known for his novels, which often have an aviation theme and are based on his experiences as an aeronautical engineer and as a pilot. He used the name Nevil Shute for his novels, but as an engineer he was Nevil Norway. Born in Ealing, he went to Shrewsbury School and Balliol College. The family moved to Dublin where his father was head of the Post Office, and Nevil was a stretcher bearer during the 1916 Easter Rising. For some reason a stammer prevented his joining the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, and instead he joined the Suffolk Regiment. He started his career at de Havilland before moving to Vickers to work on the development of airships. In the 1920s aeroplanes were considered unsuitable for carrying large numbers of passengers long distances, whereas airships – the Graf Zeppelin being one – were already carrying commercial loads.

The title of his autobiography Slide rule refers to the now largely obsolete calculation tool (a manual analog computer in the form of a ruler) that was used by engineers. In it he describes his role as Chief Calculator (stress engineer) for the R100 airship being developed by a subsidiary of Vickers at Howden, Yorkshire, in parallel with the government-developed R101 at Cardington, Bedfordshire. Barnes Wallis was Chief Engineer, responsible for the geodetic design and gas-bag wiring. R100 airship [2] The airship was 709 feet (216 m) long and 130 feet (40 m) in diameter. Loaded with hydrogen gas it was light as a feather. Its top speed was 81 mph using three power cars each housing two Rolls Royce Condor engines. The gas bags were made of light fabric lined with goldbeaters skin (a kind of vellum). But the relative lack of internal support made the outer cover problematic. However, it was a placid mode of transport. On the demonstration long-distance flight to Canada one of the crew lost his wristwatch on the exterior walkway on top of the airship.

It remained there for the entire flight and was returned to him later. The designers of the fated R101 included those responsible, in Nevil Norways opinion, for the disaster of the R38 whose engineering had not included stress-calculations: while undergoing test manoeuvres over Hull in 1921, the structure of R38 failed and it crashed in flames in the Humber, killing 44 of the 49 crew. The R100 and R101 projects worked in somewhat hostile competition rather than collaboratively, thereby wasting effort and losing the benefits of double-checking. The R101’s demonstration test flight in 1930 was to be to India, but insufficient fuel capacity required modifications, which split the outer cover. The repairs were reinforced with tapes, and the cover then doped all over (dope is a highly flammable substance, a component of gun cotton, used to tauten the fabric skin of aircraft). This reacted with rubber solution in the tape-adhesive and, shown it on a visit to Cardington, Nevil Norway found with horror that it made it friable. The gas bags were also leaking.

Asked to judge the airworthiness of their own ship, the designers naturally replied in the affirmative in order to compete with the successful long-distance flight of their private-enterprise rival. No second check was imposed and political urgency forced the flight. It crashed in France and burst into flames, killing 48 men  a worse disaster than the Hindenburg crash, caught so graphically on film in 1937. Nevil Norway considered the failure to be due to poor design, incompetence and the folly of Lord Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, a Labour politician killed in the crash. Airship development ceased, R100 was sold for its scrap value of £500. No highway is partly based on the R101 fiasco. Out of a job, Nevil Norway decided to start an aeroplane manufacturing company, Airspeed Ltd. He was living in the St Leonards Club, York, a member of which, A. E. Hewitt, helped him to raise the capital.

One investor was Lord Grimthorpe, of Beckett & Co Bank, in Leeds, who also saw it as a philanthropic enterprise in the depression years, (Norways views on other, more rapacious, bankers are interesting eight decades later). Others were Alan Cobham and Amy Johnson. 17-21 Piccadilly, York [3] The company rented half of an empty bus garage at 17-21 Piccadilly, York, and an office at 10 Piccadilly Chambers, employing two draughtsmen and six or seven woodworkers on a batch of three sailplanes, which they named Terns, each able to carry a pilot and ten passengers. By 1932 there were 50 or 60 employees. The Ferry and the Courier followed, the latter having a retractable undercarriage, which later greatly influenced designers of military aircraft such as the Hawker Hurricane and the Spitfire. Airspeed Ltd moved to Portsmouth in March 1933, taking half of their 100 workers with them and ending Nevil Shute Norways connection with York.

He left the aircraft industry in 1938 and joined the navy during World War II. He emigrated to Australia in 1950, believing his country was doomed under Labour. His novel In the wet is an interesting (and wrong) prediction of a Soviet-style England 30 years after the coronation of the Queen. To find out more –

Question: Which country was the setting for the novels of Neville Shute?
Answer: Australia