amicus
Literotica Guru
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- Sep 28, 2003
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For Those Who Love To Read Novels, Neville Shute Norway
by amicus2k5 on Apr 02 (edit) (bookmark) (print) (next)
Author's Last Login: 13 seconds ago
In Category: Contemporary, Society, Personal.
There have been times in my life when I wandered the aisles
of whatever local library I was near, searching for a novel
to read.
I thought perhaps to share some authors and novels that,
over the years, have remained emminently readable in the
21st Century.
I recently watched the film, "On The Beach' with Gregory
Peck and Ava Gardner, the movie made from a book written
by Neville Shute Norway.
Novels
• Marazan
• So Disdained
• Lonely Road
• Ruined City
• What Happened to the Corbetts?
• An Old Captivity
• Landfall
• Pied Piper
• Pastoral
• Most Secret
• The Chequerboard
• No Highway
• A Town Like Alice
• Round the Bend
• The Far Country
• In the Wet
• Requiem for a Wren
• Beyond the Black Stump
• On the Beach
• The Rainbow and the Rose
• Trustee from the Toolroom
• Stephen Morris
Screenplay
• Vinland the Good
I have read everything written by Neville Shute Norway,
as Ialways do with authors that entertain and enlighten
me. I would not choose a favorite as I love all his
works, but I am reminded of "An Old Captivity" as one
of the most amazing stories I ever read.
I would like to continue this series with perhaps a
dozen authors or so and would appreciate any reviews
or comments should you choose to read any of the
suggested titles.
Biography
Extract from the Dictionary of National Biography
1951 - 1960 NORWAY, NEVIL SHUTE (1899-1960), novelist
under the name NEVIL SHUTE and aeronautical engineer,
was born in Ealing on 17th January 1899, the younger
son of a Cornishman, Arthur Hamilton Norway, who
became an assistant secretary of the General Post
Office, and his wife Mary Louisa Gadsden.
At the age of 11, Norway played truant from his first
preparatory school in Hammersmith, spending days among
the model aircraft at the Science Museum examining wing
control on the Bleriot and trying to puzzle out how the
engine of the Antoinette ran without a carburettor.
On being detected in these precocious studies, he was
sent to the Dragon School, Oxford, and thence to
Shrewsbury. He was on holiday in Dublin, where his
father was then Secretary to the Post Office in Ireland,
at the time of the Easter rising of 1916 and acted as a
stretcher-bearer, winning a commendation for gallant
conduct.
He passed into the Royal Military Academy with the aim
of being commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps, but
a bad stammer led to his being failed at his final
medical examination and returned to civil life. The last
few months of the war (in which his brother had been
killed) were spent on home service as a private in the
Suffolk Regiment.
In 1919 Norway went up to Balliol College, Oxford, where
he took a third class honours in engineering science in
1922 and rowed in the college second eight. During the
vacations he worked, unpaid, for the Aircraft Manufacturing
Company at Hendon, then for (Sir) Geoffrey de Havilland's
own firm, which he joined as an employee on coming down
from Oxford. He now fulfilled his thwarted wartime
ambition of learning to fly and gained experience as
a test observer. During the evenings he diligently wrote
novels and short stories unperturbed by rejection slips
from publishers.
In 1924 Norway took the post of Chief Calculator to the
Airship Guarantee Company, a subsidiary of Vickers Ltd,
to work on the construction of the R100. In 1929 he became
Deputy Chief Engineer under (Sir) Barnes Wallis, and in the
following year he flew to and from Canada in the R100.
He had a passionate belief in the future of airships, but
his hopes foundered in the crash of its government rival,
the R101, wrecked with the loss of Lord Thompson, the then
Minister of Aviation, and most of those on board. He had
watched with mounting horror what he regarded as the criminal inefficiency with which the R101 was being constructed. His
experience in this phase of his career left a lasting
bitterness; it bred in him almost pathological distrust
of politicians and civil servants.
Recognizing that airship development was a lost cause,
he founded in 1931 Airspeed Ltd, aeroplane constructors,
in an old garage, and remained joint managing director
unti1 1938. The pioneering atmosphere of aircraft
construction in those days suited his temperament. He
revelled in individual enterprise and doing things on
a financial shoestring. When the business grew and was
becoming on of humdrum routine, producing aircraft to
government orders, he decided to get out of the rut and
live by writing. He had by 1938 enjoyed some success as
a novelist and had sold the film rights of Lonely Road
(1932) and Ruined City (1938).
On the outbreak of war in 1939, Norway joined the Royal
Naval Volunteer Reserve as a Sub-Lieutenant in the
Miscellaneous Weapons Department. Rising to Lieutenant
Commander, he found experimenting with secret weapons a
job after his own heart. But he found that his growing
celebrity as a writer caused him to be in the Normandy
landings on 6th June 1944, for the Ministry of Information,
and to be sent to Burma as a correspondent in 1945.
He entered Rangoon with the 15th Corps from Arakan.
Soon after demobilisation in 1945 he emigrated to Australia
and made his home in Langwarrin, Victoria. High taxation
and what he felt to be the decadence of Britain, with the
spirit of personal independence and freedom dying, led him
to leave the Old Country.
His output of novels, which began with Marazan (1926)
continued to the end. Writing under his Christian names,
Nevil Shute, he had an unaffected popular touch which made
him a best-seller throughout the Commonwealth and the United
States. The secret of his success lay in the skill with
which he combined loving familiarity with technicalities and
a straightforward sense of human relationships and values.
He conveyed to the readers his own zest for making and flying
aircraft. The hazards and rewards of back-room boys have never
been more sympathetically portrayed nor with closer inside
knowledge. His natural gift for creating briskly moving plots
did not extend to the delineation of character in anything
more than conventional terms. He retained to the last the
outlook of a decent, average public-school boy of his
generation.
Although he lived into the James Bond era, he never made the
slightest concessions to the fast growing appetite in the
mass fiction market for sadism and violence.
No Highway (1948), dealing with the drama of structural
fatigue in aircraft, set in terms of those responsible for
a competitive passenger service, gave full scope to both
sides of his talent. Machines and men and women share in
shaping the drama. A Town Like Alice (1950), describing
the grim Odyssey of white women and children in
Japanese-occupied Malaya, captured the cinema audiences
as completely as it did the reading public. Round the Bend
(1951) was thought by Norway himself to be his most enduring
book. It told of the aircraft engineer of mixed eastern and
western stock who taught his men to worship God through work conscientiously and prayerfully performed and came to be
regarded as divine by peoples of many creeds. On the Beach
(1957) expressed Norway's sensitive appreciation of the
frightful possibilities of global warfare and annihilation
by radio-active dust.
Other novels, several of them filmed, were What Happened
to the Corbetts (1939) An Old Captivity (1940), Landfall
(1940) Pied Piper (1942) Pastoral (1944) In the Wet (1953)
and Requiem for a Wren (1955). In Slide Rule (1954)
sub-titled "The Autobiography of an Engineer", he told,
candidly and racily, of his life up to 1938 when he left
the aircraft industry.
The stammer, which was as much a stimulus as a handicap,
did not prevent Norway from being good company, always
welcome at social gatherings of his many friends. An
enthusiastic yachtsman and fisherman as well as an air
pilot, he delighted in outdoor life, and his gaiety was
not dimmed by the heart attacks from which he suffered.
by amicus2k5 on Apr 02 (edit) (bookmark) (print) (next)
Author's Last Login: 13 seconds ago
In Category: Contemporary, Society, Personal.
There have been times in my life when I wandered the aisles
of whatever local library I was near, searching for a novel
to read.
I thought perhaps to share some authors and novels that,
over the years, have remained emminently readable in the
21st Century.
I recently watched the film, "On The Beach' with Gregory
Peck and Ava Gardner, the movie made from a book written
by Neville Shute Norway.
Novels
• Marazan
• So Disdained
• Lonely Road
• Ruined City
• What Happened to the Corbetts?
• An Old Captivity
• Landfall
• Pied Piper
• Pastoral
• Most Secret
• The Chequerboard
• No Highway
• A Town Like Alice
• Round the Bend
• The Far Country
• In the Wet
• Requiem for a Wren
• Beyond the Black Stump
• On the Beach
• The Rainbow and the Rose
• Trustee from the Toolroom
• Stephen Morris
Screenplay
• Vinland the Good
I have read everything written by Neville Shute Norway,
as Ialways do with authors that entertain and enlighten
me. I would not choose a favorite as I love all his
works, but I am reminded of "An Old Captivity" as one
of the most amazing stories I ever read.
I would like to continue this series with perhaps a
dozen authors or so and would appreciate any reviews
or comments should you choose to read any of the
suggested titles.
Biography
Extract from the Dictionary of National Biography
1951 - 1960 NORWAY, NEVIL SHUTE (1899-1960), novelist
under the name NEVIL SHUTE and aeronautical engineer,
was born in Ealing on 17th January 1899, the younger
son of a Cornishman, Arthur Hamilton Norway, who
became an assistant secretary of the General Post
Office, and his wife Mary Louisa Gadsden.
At the age of 11, Norway played truant from his first
preparatory school in Hammersmith, spending days among
the model aircraft at the Science Museum examining wing
control on the Bleriot and trying to puzzle out how the
engine of the Antoinette ran without a carburettor.
On being detected in these precocious studies, he was
sent to the Dragon School, Oxford, and thence to
Shrewsbury. He was on holiday in Dublin, where his
father was then Secretary to the Post Office in Ireland,
at the time of the Easter rising of 1916 and acted as a
stretcher-bearer, winning a commendation for gallant
conduct.
He passed into the Royal Military Academy with the aim
of being commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps, but
a bad stammer led to his being failed at his final
medical examination and returned to civil life. The last
few months of the war (in which his brother had been
killed) were spent on home service as a private in the
Suffolk Regiment.
In 1919 Norway went up to Balliol College, Oxford, where
he took a third class honours in engineering science in
1922 and rowed in the college second eight. During the
vacations he worked, unpaid, for the Aircraft Manufacturing
Company at Hendon, then for (Sir) Geoffrey de Havilland's
own firm, which he joined as an employee on coming down
from Oxford. He now fulfilled his thwarted wartime
ambition of learning to fly and gained experience as
a test observer. During the evenings he diligently wrote
novels and short stories unperturbed by rejection slips
from publishers.
In 1924 Norway took the post of Chief Calculator to the
Airship Guarantee Company, a subsidiary of Vickers Ltd,
to work on the construction of the R100. In 1929 he became
Deputy Chief Engineer under (Sir) Barnes Wallis, and in the
following year he flew to and from Canada in the R100.
He had a passionate belief in the future of airships, but
his hopes foundered in the crash of its government rival,
the R101, wrecked with the loss of Lord Thompson, the then
Minister of Aviation, and most of those on board. He had
watched with mounting horror what he regarded as the criminal inefficiency with which the R101 was being constructed. His
experience in this phase of his career left a lasting
bitterness; it bred in him almost pathological distrust
of politicians and civil servants.
Recognizing that airship development was a lost cause,
he founded in 1931 Airspeed Ltd, aeroplane constructors,
in an old garage, and remained joint managing director
unti1 1938. The pioneering atmosphere of aircraft
construction in those days suited his temperament. He
revelled in individual enterprise and doing things on
a financial shoestring. When the business grew and was
becoming on of humdrum routine, producing aircraft to
government orders, he decided to get out of the rut and
live by writing. He had by 1938 enjoyed some success as
a novelist and had sold the film rights of Lonely Road
(1932) and Ruined City (1938).
On the outbreak of war in 1939, Norway joined the Royal
Naval Volunteer Reserve as a Sub-Lieutenant in the
Miscellaneous Weapons Department. Rising to Lieutenant
Commander, he found experimenting with secret weapons a
job after his own heart. But he found that his growing
celebrity as a writer caused him to be in the Normandy
landings on 6th June 1944, for the Ministry of Information,
and to be sent to Burma as a correspondent in 1945.
He entered Rangoon with the 15th Corps from Arakan.
Soon after demobilisation in 1945 he emigrated to Australia
and made his home in Langwarrin, Victoria. High taxation
and what he felt to be the decadence of Britain, with the
spirit of personal independence and freedom dying, led him
to leave the Old Country.
His output of novels, which began with Marazan (1926)
continued to the end. Writing under his Christian names,
Nevil Shute, he had an unaffected popular touch which made
him a best-seller throughout the Commonwealth and the United
States. The secret of his success lay in the skill with
which he combined loving familiarity with technicalities and
a straightforward sense of human relationships and values.
He conveyed to the readers his own zest for making and flying
aircraft. The hazards and rewards of back-room boys have never
been more sympathetically portrayed nor with closer inside
knowledge. His natural gift for creating briskly moving plots
did not extend to the delineation of character in anything
more than conventional terms. He retained to the last the
outlook of a decent, average public-school boy of his
generation.
Although he lived into the James Bond era, he never made the
slightest concessions to the fast growing appetite in the
mass fiction market for sadism and violence.
No Highway (1948), dealing with the drama of structural
fatigue in aircraft, set in terms of those responsible for
a competitive passenger service, gave full scope to both
sides of his talent. Machines and men and women share in
shaping the drama. A Town Like Alice (1950), describing
the grim Odyssey of white women and children in
Japanese-occupied Malaya, captured the cinema audiences
as completely as it did the reading public. Round the Bend
(1951) was thought by Norway himself to be his most enduring
book. It told of the aircraft engineer of mixed eastern and
western stock who taught his men to worship God through work conscientiously and prayerfully performed and came to be
regarded as divine by peoples of many creeds. On the Beach
(1957) expressed Norway's sensitive appreciation of the
frightful possibilities of global warfare and annihilation
by radio-active dust.
Other novels, several of them filmed, were What Happened
to the Corbetts (1939) An Old Captivity (1940), Landfall
(1940) Pied Piper (1942) Pastoral (1944) In the Wet (1953)
and Requiem for a Wren (1955). In Slide Rule (1954)
sub-titled "The Autobiography of an Engineer", he told,
candidly and racily, of his life up to 1938 when he left
the aircraft industry.
The stammer, which was as much a stimulus as a handicap,
did not prevent Norway from being good company, always
welcome at social gatherings of his many friends. An
enthusiastic yachtsman and fisherman as well as an air
pilot, he delighted in outdoor life, and his gaiety was
not dimmed by the heart attacks from which he suffered.
