Nevil Shute | |
---|---|
Born |
Ealing, Middlesex, England |
17 January 1899
Died | 12 January 1960 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
(aged 60)
Pen name | Nevil Shute |
Occupation | Novelist aeronautical engineer |
Nationality | British, emigrated to Australia 1950 |
Genre | Fiction |
Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 1899 – 12 January 1960) 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.
Born in Somerset Road, Ealing, Middlesex, he was educated at the Dragon School, Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford; he graduated from Oxford University in 1922 with a third-class degree in engineering science. Shute's father, Arthur Hamilton Norway, became head of the Post Office in Ireland before the First World War and was based at the main post office in Dublin in 1916 at the time of the Easter Rising. Shute himself was later commended for his role as a stretcher-bearer during the rising. On 13 June 1915 his elder brother, Fredrick Hamilton Norway, aged 19, was wounded at Epinette, near Armentières, and was evacuated to Wimereux where he died, on 4 July, with his parents by his side. He was buried at Wimereux Communal Cemetery, Pas-de-Calais.
Shute attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, but because of his stammer was unable to take up a commission in the Royal Flying Corps, instead serving in the Great War as a soldier in the Suffolk Regiment.
An aeronautical engineer as well as a pilot, he began his engineering career with the De Havilland Aircraft Company. (He used his pen-name as an author to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.)