Estate of Nevil Shute

Nevil Shute Norway was born in 1899 and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. Having decided early on an aeronautical career, he went to work for the de Havilland Aircraft Company as an engineer, and then moved on to the Airship Guarantee Company where he played a large part in the construction of the airship R100. His first novel, Marzan (1926), was written at this time. After the disaster to the R101, he turned his attention to aeroplane construction and co-founded his own firm, Airspeed Ltd, in 1931. He married Frances Mary Heaton in the same year and they had 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).