Nevil Shute Norway FRAeS (1899 - 1960)

Born 17 Jan 1899 in Ealing, London, England, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Husband of Frances Mary (Heaton) Norway — married 7 Mar 1931 in Bromley, Kent, England, United Kingdom

Died 12 Jan 1960 at age 60 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

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Biography

Nevil Shute Norway FRAeS is Notable.

Nevil Shute Norway FRAeS 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 any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.

formative years

Born Nevil Shute Norway on 17th January 1899 at 16 Somerset Road, Ealing, London, England, United Kingdom, Nevil was the younger son of Arthur Hamilton Norway and Louisa Gadsden. ^[1] His father was a classical scholar and the author of a number of travel books. His mother was the daughter of a Major General in the Indian army. Nevil was christened on 18th February 1899 in St John's Church, Northfields, Ealing. ^[2]

As a child, Nevil was fascinated by airplanes and was building models. He found that he was very good with his hands. From the age of five or six he stuttered very badly, and still did on occasion as an adult. In 1912 his father accepted the position as Secretary to the Post Office in Ireland and the family moved to a house at Blackrock, about 10 miles south of Dublin. The family was caught up in Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising. The death of his elder brother in June 1915 in the trenches in France and the deaths of so many others that he knew as students had a significant impact on Nevil and can be seen in his writings. ^[2] While at school he spent several summers working for the de Havilland Company. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1922 with a third-class degree in engineering science. At this time he got his pilot's license. He also began writing, first poetry and finally novels. ^[2]

military service

Nevil was introduced to death in combat in 1916 when he witnessed the death of a troop of Lancers on horseback when the Sinn Fein took over buildings in Dublin. He joined the ambulance service as a stretcher bearer the next day. He applied for a commission as an officer and elected for the Royal Flying Corps. After months of training he was "chucked out" because of his stuttering. In August 1918 he enlisted in the Suffolk Regiment, as an infantry private. His comment about his service is instructive: "I know of no life as restful as the life of a private soldier. In those days it was assumed that he was quite incapable of any rational thought or responsibility; his Corporal shepherded him about and told him where to go and what to do. Nevil never had to think for himself about anything at all. ^[2]

marriage

Having returned to England, Nevil married Frances Heaton on 7th March 1931 in St Peter's Church of England, Bromley, Kent. ^[3] They had two daughters:

• Heather F Norway (1932 York-) married Don Mayfield in 1963. Lived in the USA. ^[4]
• Shirley A Norway (1935 Portsmouth-) ^[5]

engineering

An aeronautical engineer as well as a pilot, Nevil began his engineering career with the De Havilland Aircraft Company. Dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities for advancement, he took a position in 1924 with Vickers Ltd, where he was involved with the development of airships. In 1929 he was promoted to Deputy Chief Engineer of the R100 project under Barnes Wallis, inventor of the 'Bouncing Bomb', and when Wallis left the project he became the Chief Engineer. In 1931, with the cancellation of the R100 project, Nevil teamed up with the talented de Havilland-trained designer Hessell Tiltman to found the aircraft construction company Airspeed Ltd. For the innovation of developing a hydraulic retractable undercarriage for the Airspeed Courier, and his work on R100, Nevil was made a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (FRAeS). ^[2]

another war

By the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Nevil 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 and quickly ended up in what would become the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development. His celebrity as a writer caused the Ministry of Information to send him to the Normandy Landings on 6th June 1944 and later to Burma as a correspondent. He finished the war with the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the RNVR.

author

Nevil Shute is, of course, best known for his writing. More than twenty of his works have been published. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of the world's best-selling novelists.

• A Town Like Alice, 1950, ^[6] may be the best known; it was made into a film in 1956, a television miniseries in 1981 and a six part radio version in 1997. ^[7]
• His first published novel was Marazan in 1926 ^[8], in which a convict rescues a downed pilot who helps him break up a drug ring.
• On the Beach, 1957, ^[9], is the most haunting; describing the end of human civilization as the result of a nuclear war. It was produced as a film in both 1959 and 2000. ^[10] In addition it ran as a comic strip in 1959. Copies of the strips are available. ^[11]
• Round the Bend, 1951, ^[12] was considered by Nevil to be his best novel. It tackles racism, condemning the White Australia policy.
• Trustee from the Toolroom, 1960, ^[13] about the recovery of a lost legacy of diamonds from a wrecked sailboat, was Nevil's last novel.

Nevil's novels are written in a simple, highly readable style, with clearly delineated plot lines. Where there is a romantic element, sex is referred to only obliquely. Many of the stories are introduced by a narrator who is not a character in the story. The most common theme is the dignity of work, spanning all classes. Aviation and engineering provide the backdrop for many of his novels. He identified how engineering, science, and design could improve human life. Nevil's heroes tended to be like himself: middle class solicitors, doctors, accountants, bank managers, engineers, generally university graduates. However, as in Trustee from the Toolroom, he valued the honest artisans and their social integrity and contributions to society more than the contributions of the upper classes.

emigration

Nevil Shute Norway FRAeS migrated from England to Australia.

In 1948, Nevil flew his own Percival Proctor aeroplane to Australia and back. Upon his return, he became concerned about what he saw as the decline of his home country, and decided that he and his family would emigrate to Australia. In 1950, he settled with his wife and two daughters on farmland at Langwarrin, a marathon distance of 42 kilometres (26 miles) south-east of Melbourne, Victoria.

Although he intended to remain in Australia, he did not apply for Australian citizenship which, at that time, was not required because he was a British subject.

final rest and legacy

Following a stroke, Nevil Shute Norway passed away on 12th January 1960 in Melbourne. ^[14] He was survived by his wife and daughters. Frances later returned to England, where she passed away in 1971.

Nevil is remembered through:

• Norway Road and Nevil Shute Road at Portsmouth Airport, Hampshire, which were both named in his honour.
• 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, Australia is the Nevil Shute Memorial Library.

"My father was Victorian let's face it...
breakfast was at 8:15, lunch was at 1:00, and dinner was at 7:30.
If you were at home, you had to be there. That's the way it was."
Nevil Shute Norway

On 16th January 1999 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Shirley presented Growing Up With Nevil Shute Norway at the Nevil Shute Centennial Celebration. In her presentation she mentioned the origin of the Norway name: "It was a Cornish family. The name Norway came from, of course, the Norwegians. The Norwegians used to bring timber to Cornwall and trade it for tin." As for the routine at home: "... my father was a Victorian, let's face it, and breakfast was at 8:15, lunch was at 1:00, and dinner was at 7:30, and you had to be there. If you were at home you had to be there. That's the way it was." Shirley's memories of her Dad: "My most memorable and happy times spent with him were when I'd go into his metal workshop and just stand beside him, and he would have this bit of metal in the lathe and he was making some intricate thing for some little engine he was working on and that's what he thought he was doing." ^[15]

Sources

1. ↑ UK FreeBMD Birth Index Mar qtr 1899, vol 3a, page 105
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4} Nevil Shute. Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer. 1954. p. 11, 12, 18, 32.
3. ↑ UK FreeBMD Marriage Index Mar qtr 1931, vol 2a, page 913
4. ↑ Nevil Shute website: Heather Mayfield
5. ↑ Nevil Shute website: Shirley Norway
6. ↑ Shute, Nevil. A Town Like Alice. ISBN 1-84232-300-8
7. ↑ A Town Like Alice at Eikipedia
8. ↑ Shute, Nevil. Marazan. ISBN 1-84232-265-6
9. ↑ Shute, Nevil. On the Beach. ISBN 1-84232-276-1
10. ↑ Wikipedia: On the Beach
11. ↑ Comic-strip_adaptation_of_On_The_Beach_from_1957
12. ↑ Shute, Nevil. Round the Bend. ISBN 1-84232-289-3
13. ↑ Shute, Nevil. Trustee from the Toolroom. ISBN 1-84232-301-6
14. ↑ Victoria Death Index #638/1960
15. ↑ Nevil Shute Norway Foundation: Shirley Norway Part 1; accessed 13 Jan 2022

See also:

• Croft, Julian. Norway, Nevil Shute (1899–1960). Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 2000; accessed online 3 Jul 2018.
• Nevil Shute Norway Foundation: John Henry; accessed 3 Jul 2018.
• Nevil Shute Norway Foundation: Heather Mayfield; accessed 3 Jul 2018.
• St Issey Folk: Nevil Shute Norway; accessed 3 Jul 2018.
• Wikipedia: Nevil Shute; accessed 3 Jul 2018.
• https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tDP1TfITstKN2D04s5LLcvMUSjOKC1JBQBVGQed&q=nevil+shute&rlz=1C1NHXL_en-GBAU939AU939&oq=neville+shute&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j46i10i131i433i512j46i10i512j0i10i512l4j46i10i512l2.10883j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8