About the author:
Nevil Shute, (1899—1960) born in Ealing, Middlex, England, was a man of many talents: engineer, aviator, sailor, journalist, and . He attended Shrewsbury School as a youth, and in 1912, his father, a career civil rvant, was made head of the postal rvi Ireland and posted to Dublin. Young Nevil withe 1916 Easter Rising, although his father happeo be away from the GPO that day.
Shute read engineering at Balliol College, Oxford and after graduation worked as an aeronautical designer and engineer with De Havilland Aircraft Co.,1922-24; chief calculator and later deputy chief engineer with Airship Guarantee Co., 1924-30; and founder and managing director of Airspeed Ltd., 1931-38. During World War II, he worked on ons design ahe rank of lieutenant-ander in the Royal Naval Voluntary Rerve. After the war, Shute worked briefly for the Ministry of Information, visiting and writing on Burma; in 1950 he and his family relocated to Australia, where he remained until his death in 1960.
Although Shute was a talented engineer who tributions to aviation include such uful innovations as retractable landing gear, he is more widely known for his literary achievements. Shute’s father, mother and grandmother were all published authors, so it is perhaps not surprising that Shute would try his hand at writing. Although his first novel, Marazan, ublished in 1926 he did not turn to writing full-time until the 1940s, and always thought of himlf not as an author but as “an engineer who writes books.” Many of his novels drew heavily on Shute’s own real-life experiences and engineering knowledge: veral of his main characters are aviators ineers, and he predicted the problems of metal fatigue in No Highway (1948), veral years before the fledgling ercial airline industry began to enter it, and the global horrors of nuclear war in On the Beach (1957).
han ten movies have been made from eight of Shute’s novels (On the Bead Pied Piper were each made twice).Undoubtedly the famous is the 1959 version of On the Beach starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astair, and Anthony Perkins, although Shute himlf did not care for the film version. The movie is sometimes credited with playing a major part iernational protest against nuclear ons.
About the author:
Nevil Shute, (1899—1960) born in Ealing, Middlex, England, was a man of many talents: engineer, aviator, sailor, journalist, and . He attended Shrewsbury School as a youth, and in 1912, his father, a career civil rvant, was made head of the postal rvi Ireland and posted to Dublin. Young Nevil withe 1916 Easter Rising, although his father happeo be away from the GPO that day.
Shute read engineering at Balliol College, Oxford and after graduation worked as an aeronautical designer and engineer with De Havilland Aircraft Co.,1922-24; chief calculator and later deputy chief engineer with Airship Guarantee Co., 1924-30; and founder and managing director of Airspeed Ltd., 1931-38. During World War II, he worked on ons design ahe rank of lieutenant-ander in the Royal Naval Voluntary Rerve. After the war, Shute worked briefly for the Ministry of Information, visiting and writing on Burma; in 1950 he and his family relocated to Australia, where he remained until his death in 1960.