Nevil Shute - Complete Works of Nevil Shute

The Complete Works of

NEVIL SHUTE

(1899-1960)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2020

Version 1

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The Complete Works of

NEVIL SHUTE

By Delphi Classics, 2020

Complete Works of Nevil Shute

First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2020.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 91348 709 6

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Ealing, West London, early 1900s Nevil Shute was born in Ealing on 17 January 1899.

Ealing today

The birthplace, 16 Somerset Road, Ealing

Shute was sent to Dragon School, Oxford in 1910.

Nevil Shute Norway was born in Ealing, Middlesex, in 1899 and he was educated at the Dragon School, Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1922 with a third-class degree in engineering science. An aeronautical engineer as well as a pilot, Shute commenced his engineering career with the de Havilland Aircraft Company. In his subsequent career as an author, he dropped the use of his surname Norway to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his writing.

Dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities for promotion, he took a position in 1924 with Vickers Ltd., where he was involved with the development of airships, working as Chief Calculator on the R100 airship project. In 1929 he was promoted to Deputy Chief Engineer of the R100 project under Barnes Wallis and when Wallis left the project he became the Chief Engineer. While working hard at his career in engineering, he also enjoyed spending his free time writing.

Marazan was published in 1926 by Cassell and Co. and later republished by William Heinemann in 1951. It was written and revised multiple times before it was published according to the authors later memoir. Although it was not the first novel Shute had written, it was the first of his works to be published. Set against the backdrop of the Isles of Scilly, it is an action thriller novel, centring on the pilot Philip Stenning, who crashes while flying through no fault of his own. He is rescued by the escaped convict, Denis Compton, who claims he was imprisoned after being framed for embezzlement by his drug smuggling, half-brother Baron Mattani. Stenning soon becomes involved in trying to capture the violent and corrupt Mattani

The first edition of the novel

The Isles of Scilly, an archipelago 25 miles off the south-western tip of Cornwall, England the principal setting of the novel

T HIS WAS THE first of my books to be published, and in reissuing it after twenty-five years of obscurity I feel that it may interest young writers if I put down a few reflections about it. It was published when I was twenty-seven years old, and it was preceded by two novels which were quite unpublishable, because everybody has to learn his trade. It was written in the evenings while I was working at Crayford in Kent on the preliminary design of the airship R.100, as chief calculator, or mathematician. The whole book was written through from start to finish three times, so that it took me about eighteen months.

So much is published in this modern age about murder, detection, and prison that a young writer who has yet to learn the nature of drama tends to turn to these threadbare subjects for his story and I was no exception. I dont think I knew a great deal about any of them. The aircraft scenes were built up from my experience with the de Havilland Company in its very earliest days. The character of Philip Stenning derived from half a dozen pilots of that Companys Air Taxi service: in those pioneering days of civil aviation pilots had to be tough.