David Dennington's Blog, page 2

Review of MARAZAN by Nevil Shute published 1926

I was pleasantly surprised by this book, Nevil Shute’s debut novel. I’d read it as a teenager and was not so taken with it then. It’s better than I thought. Exciting, with drug smuggling, a daring-do pilot and ‘flossies’ (floozies in today’’s lingo I think); melodramatic (with a Moriati-type, evil foreign, fascist gentleman) and cinematic, in keeping with its day, but not politically correct in today’s ‘brave new world’. It is a pager-turner, especially at the climax. One pauses and smiles to think that in the present day, when we can track just about anything or anyone without all the observing they had to do on the ground for interception of the bad guys.

It is interesting to visualize Nevil Shute Norway in 1924 at age 25 working away on calculations for the great Airship R100 as the No 2 man under the great engineer, Barnes Wallis. At that time Shute was based at Crayford, Kent. In 1926, the whole team moved into their restored air station at Howden, Yorkshire. Barnes Wallis lived in Catford, London and worked in Westminster up until that time.

Nevil Shute was a well-educated, logical man of science and it shows in the way he lived his life and the way he operated. He was a man who ‘thought outside the box’. As he toiled by day on the great dirigible, he sat and wrote novels by night as recreation. One can see him sitting over an old Underwood puffing his pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sabrani.

The descriptions of sailing around the Scillies off southwest England in the English Channel and the flying back in the early twenties are excellent. I guess there is no such place as Marazan Sound, at least I could not find it. Shute’s works are cinematic and paced well for adaption into film.

He talks about fascists. In those days he could not have known that they would turn out to be the bad guys as were the communists in Russia and China. He wasn’t to know they were just another bunch of Socialists a different branding. He shows his old friend as one of the good fascists!

An interesting read for Shutists. He certainly inspired me over the course of my life. Four stars may be a bit high but I am biased.

REVIEW: THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE by ERIK LARSON.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book moved me and, I must confess, many a time I had tears in my eyes. My mother left London to escape the Nazi bombing which, when you read about it here, was actually
worse than I thought – even though my playgrounds as a child were bombed out ruins, and we had plenty to choose from I can tell you! My mother left and went north to Durham in order to have me in a safe environment. In March of 1941, the snow was very deep, and at twenty-two years old and all alone, she must have been a very lonely girl. My dad, at twenty-six, was fighting those fires of London as a fireman—an experience from which he never recovered and would never discuss.

Larson does a magnificent job telling Churchill’s story from many different points of view: Clementine’s (wife), Mary’s (daughter), Lord Beaverbrook’s and Colville’s (personal secretary), to name a few. The author shows Churchill’s extraordinary resilience against all odds both at home and from within Hitler’s Socialist German Worker’s Party, bent on exterminating the British and evening the score from their defeat of WW1. They promised ‘they’d be back’ and they were, with a vengeance.

I know a book is good when I have to thoroughly read all the back material—like remaining in the cinema after a great film to read each and every credit.

If you enjoy reading about history, great men and women and a heroic story of overcoming evil, you will love Larson’s great work, as I did.




View all my reviews

THE AIRSHIPMEN TRILOGY

I am pleased to announce that after many requests that a special edition of The Airshipmen will be published in three volumes as a trilogy. This version will be easier on the eye with plenty of 'white space'. This special edition will commemorate the loss of Airship R38/ZR-2, one hundred years ago this August 24th at 5:20 pm. 16 American and 28 British Airshipmen were lost that day when that ship broke in two and went down in flames into the River Humber.

Many readers told me that they had taken the trouble to Google the facts as they read this story. I have therefore added forty or fifty photographs in each volume in sequence so that readers can see who the main players were, picture the airships and the situations they faced.
The three volumes are entitled:
From Ashes
Lords of the Air
To Ashes.
Under the main title of The Airshipmen Trilogy

For reviews of this epic story see The Airshipmen book pages on Amazon and Goodreads.

KINDLE BOOKS SALE

A KINDLE $0.99 sales promo will run July 20 through July 27, 2019 for:

THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN HINCHLIFFE

and

THE AIRSHIPMEN


THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN HINCHLIFFE REVIEW BY JEFFREY KEETEN
GOODREADS TOP BOOK REVIEWER
One of the things I most enjoy about Dennington's books is his development of female characters. They are not merely furniture or cardboard cutouts. They are women who are multi-talented and not at all compelled to be confined to a traditional role. They want to experience life on the same scale that any man would want. He has an affinity for bringing strong female characters, real or imaginary, to life. What I really like is that they are multi-talented. They aren't just good at one thing. That's certainly why I find them so fascinating. In this novel, Millie Hinchliffe and Elsie Mackay are so vividly portrayed they still haunt me.
We certainly should not to forget these women of the air who dared to challenge this new frontier. This book intersects with The Airshipmen. Some characters in one book show up in the other.

THE AIRSHIPMEN REVIEW BY JEFFREY KEETEN
GOODREADS TOP BOOK REVIEWER

I guess you could say that U.S.Marine, Lou Remington, is either the luckiest man on the planet or one of the most unlucky. If this were a Greek tale from Homer, we would have to assume that some god is manipulating events to keep him alive for his/her own amusement. When the R38 collapses inflames, he is one of a handful of survivors. As he convalesces, he falls in love with his nurse, Charlotte, who has one of those beautiful faces that could launch a thousand airships.

As the plot develops, David Dennington weaves real life personalities into the plot. One of the most interesting for me is the Romanian Socialite Princess Marthe Bibesco, who becomes central to the politics surrounding the airship program by being friendly with the Secretary of Air Kit Thomson and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. She is universally admired for her beauty, as well as her intelligence. Every day that her schedule allows, she writes from morning till noon and left behind a vast hoard of journals and novels for future writers to investigate. Her glamour is certainly tinged with tragedy. Nevil Shute Norway is likewise one of my favorite people to show up in this novel. It was a special pleasure for me is that he brings the writer and engineer in as a major character. It reminds me how much I enjoy his writing. Shute is working as an airship engineer by day and a writer by night. Shute wrote one of my favorite apocalyptic books called On the Beach, which was made into an excellent movie starring Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire. Dennington certainly brings Shute to life, stutter and all.

This is all, of course, leading up to the famous flight of Cardington's Airship R101. Will politics play too large a role? Will Charlotte be able to handle the very real stress of being married to an airshipman? Will the stalker Jessup triumph? Will Princess Bibesco say yes to Thomson's proposal of marriage? The whole future of the airship program in Great Britain rests on the flight of the Cardington R101. Dennington brings it all to life with his meticulous research.The beautiful sketches scattered throughout the book add to the enjoyment of the story. He deftly handles a blend of fascinating real people with the characters he has created to allow us to experience likely authentic conversations that could have happened at the critical stages of airship history. This is a story written on an epic scale and a fine tribute to those who risked everything to try and make airship flying safe.

REVIEW: THE FAR COUNTRY by Nevil Shute

More wandering around the world by author Nevil Shute. This time to Australia. There must have been a lot of his own feelings in this novel about his reasons for leaving England for Australia, which he did in 1950. He paints an interesting picture of life in Australia for new arrivals of Brits.
After a few opening scenes in Australia, the theme begins in England with, Jennifer Morton, the daughter of a doctor visiting her grandmother and finding her in dire straits. The old women is poverty stricken, hungry and emaciated. Due to the government-run healthcare system being poorly run and low on funds, she cannot get admitted to hospital.
Through luck and good intentions by the Australian part of the family, Jennifer ends up taking a cruise to see them on the other side of the world. She is thoroughly impressed with that country, and after meeting an interesting immigrant who had served in the war with the German Army as a doctor, she wants to stay there.
Due to unforeseen events Jennifer’s world is turned upside down and all her dreams are ruined. In usual Shute style, there instances of fantasy and coincidence, enriching the tale.
In The Far Country, Shute slams the Socialist system in Britain and failing government healthcare system. Shute’s criticism ruffled a few feathers in Britain and he was accused of being disloyal. I think Nevil Shute loved England all his life, especially the British people. In truth, Nevil Shute was a great patriot who loved Britain and the Empire where, with work, all people could prosper. It was the political system he abhorred. One senses bitterness in his narrative. ‘Will Britain ever be great again?’ he seems to ask.
He also talks about how people were not eating well in Britain and how food was rationed. I remember the old rationing books myself. Labour Party Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, was hailed as a genius in managing Britain’s post war economy. Shute might have argued that England would have prospered sooner under a free market Capitalist system.
In describing Jennifer, he says: "She had been brought up in the belief that money spent by the rich came out of the pockets of the poor, and she had never seriously questioned that. But in Australia, it seemed, there were very few poor people, if any."
I like how NS describes Jennifer going to London before leaving for Australia and her turmoil over leaving that fabulous city before boarding the ship. I had similar feelings myself before leaving it many years ago.

REVIEW: STEPHEN MORRIS by Nevil Shute

Four Stars
I started this book believing it was one of his later works and that his writing style had matured. I was surprised to learn I was completely wrong; he’d written these novellas in the twenties.

There are two nice love stories entwined in these interrelated tales. Coincidences abound, but that’s okay as it seems permissible in art. There are also a couple of moments of fantasy, a hallmark of Shute’s writing. The plots are interesting, boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. And as with so many of his books, there is much to do with flying and sailing. He also expresses his love of the West Country and all things English (with the exception of the rising tide of Socialism).

The novellas tell of the early struggles of British aviation mostly due to lack of funding. The second describes how they had invented a highly dangerous scheme to catapult a plane off a ship in mid Atlantic in order to save a day or two in mail delivery (not sure if this is based on fact). This seems incomprehensible today, now we can email a document with a phone across the world within seconds.

Nevil Shute went to Oxford and I guess when he wrote the following, it perhaps suggests he didn’t hold all of the staff in the highest esteem: ‘They were for clever people, for dons and embryo dons who would spend their lives in thinking of scholarly epigrams to let off at their fellows, in moulding their manner to fit in with the traditions of the place, in travelling to Athens in the vacations. Ineffective people, who would never do anything in the world but tell young men all about the humanities. He was sick of the lot of them. He was a mathematician and a student of realities.’

Shute, like many in those days, thought there were differences between men and women—at least this paragraph might give such an impression: ‘A man isn’t like a girl, you know,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘A girl when she marries is quite happy with her home, and her children, and she doesn’t want much else. But a man is different. He’s like a little boy that has to have his toys ... a man has to have his toys, and if you take them away from him you—you just kill him. The round of golf, or the club, or—or yachting. Once he gets really fond of a toy ... if his wife takes it away from him she can never make it up to him, however much she loves him. It’s just gone, and you can’t replace it with anything else.’
For me, this was an enjoyable read.

REVIEW: ROUND THE BEND by Nevil Shute

More flying around the world in this book. This time, it’s around the Persian Gulf, Siam, India and Burma. It relates the buildup of a business started by a young Englishman in the Gulf region back in the early days of airfreight. The narration regarding aviation is realistic as always.

The main character, Tom Cutter, grows up in England with a young man of mixed origins and one who has unique spiritual qualities and insights. This develops as the story moves along, with Cutter through thoughtlessness, seeming to cause the death of his own unfaithful wife. His friend, through his homespun teaching, attracts a following across the Middle East and the Asian Pacific and is thought to be some kind of prophet.

The flying aspects narrated in the story are interesting and one has to wonder if some of it came from events Shute witnessed and from characters he knew. A map showing the air routes Tom Cutter’s freight operations took would be interesting to see.

Once again Shute’s interest in spirituality is evident and one wonders what he would have thought of the goings on today.

REVIEW: NO HIGHWAY by Nevil Shute

Good story. Nevil Shute’s stories just keep getting better--though my edition by was full of typos (as was Ruined City which was awful). At first, I thought this book about aircraft engineering might be dull. But Shute did not disappoint. He is comfortable telling about his own subject as an expert in aeroplane design, engineering and flying.
A youngish man is put in charge of the British Research Laboratory at Farnborough. He soon learns that one of his employees, a religious eccentric, believes he’s discovered massive faults in a plane that’s recently taken to the skies. Through research he learns the tail could fail after 1400 hours of flight.
Dr. Dennis Scott realizes he has about a 1000 hours to do something before the planes in service fail in the air. It is discovered that one that has crashed over Canada had in fact done almost 1400 hours—since it had been the plane used in testing. Resolving the issue is now urgent and the tension builds nicely.
When Shute describes Mr. Honey, you have to wonder if he is describing some aspects of his own character in a disparaging way. He seems to show sympathy for Mr. Honey, who is a spiritual being, like Shute himself.
I think he may also be describing Barnes Wallis when he references Prendergast who seems like a bit of a tyrant—as one assumes that genius had to be at times. He describes, or I have read, where Wallis used to make himself ill sometimes with the stress of designing and building Airship R100, which he and Nevil Shute were engaged upon – especially due to the song and dance routines of Air Ministry bureaucrats and the Politicians, such as Lord Thomson of Cardington – not to mention the press. Shades of Airship R101 tragedy appear too. High level arguing about airworthiness, profit and prestige at the expense of human life and ambition. The research establishment etc. comes into the story, as it did with the R101 boffins who were not allowed to finish their study of the amended, redesigned airship and come to their conclusions. A whitewash and cover-up was the result.
This story has modern day overtones too: i.e. with the grounding by President Donald J Trump
of 737’s all over the world with profits and prestige affected. Shute talks a lot about psychic phenomena in this book. I had not realized just how far into those subjects he had gone.
The novel seems a little fantastic in parts, but at the end Dr. Scott’s wife tells him he really should write all this down as it will make a good book. I had to wonder if Shute was hinting that much of this story is true? After all, fact is often stranger than fiction. Did he play around with the Ouija board and planchette? Did that happen? We’ll never know.

REVIEW: RUINED CITY by Nevil Shute

Published as KINDLING in the USA

This delightful story is set in Depression-worn England—with references to the Clyde in Scotland. Henry Warren’s life is falling apart. He is working too hard as a rich banker and his wife has become bored with him and is playing around with unsavory ‘gentlemen’. After deciding to get shot of her he goes north to walk the hills and dales to get his head straight and his body in shape. He winds up desperately ill in hospital in the fictitious town of Sharples, previously a shipbuilding town. But now, the sound of the riveting and pounding steel (once music to the ears), is no more. The yards, mills and mines are silent; all around nothing but silence, hunger and misery.
After a successful operation, Warren decides to do something. He’s a compassionate Conservative—not just a filthy Capitalist (a frequent Nevil Shute theme). Without giving too much away, Warren goes to extraordinary lengths to help the town that had saved his life and by the end I was cheering, I have to say. Hence I had to give this book five stars. If a book can move you emotionally, then I think it is powerful. I judge a book by how much I enjoy it more than anything—as well as new things I learn. I’d love to see this story made into a film—it would make a nice period piece, and the scenes in the Balkans might be reminiscent of ‘Casablanca’.

This book tells us as much about Nevil Shute himself as his hero, Henry Warren. Much of Shute’s experience in the town of Howden during the 1920’s whilst he was building Airship R100 with his boss, Barnes Wallis, shows through, as does his experience with the company he started in the 1930’s—Airspeed. He started that business from scratch and it rivaled Vickers, which I find pretty astonishing. Henry Warren, like Nevil Shute, himself, is a pretty decent sort. I know that Shute suffered a lot, worrying about what would happen to the hundreds of men on his payroll if Airspeed failed. Knowledge of finance and banking learned during his ‘Airspeed Days’ also come into play in Ruined City. At one point Henry Warren tells ‘the girl’ that he needs to get out of the business—there are ‘starters’and there are ‘runners’—‘I am now a liability’. That was profound to me. That’s exactly what happened to Nevil. When Airspeed had become so big, the bigshots in the financial world declared that, ‘It is time for Nevil Shute Norway to go’. And he did. He got the boot.
Ruined City tells of how a man with the means and the will can make life better for others, even when odds are overwhelming, and even when a term in jail might be on the cards.

REVIEW: LONELY ROAD by Nevil Shute

A nicely crafted 1920’s story about a disillusioned war hero. As a wealthy owner of a boat yard and owner of many vessels, Commander Malcolm Stevenson lives in a grand house on the water near Dartmouth. He is a shy man without the closeness of a woman. Events occur turning his world on its head. He meets a beautiful working class girl from Leeds in a dance palais and they get embroiled in a dangerous plot to influence the next election. Shute’s descriptions of the Commander Stevenson’s environment are excellent and his understanding of seamanship, weather and tides is outstanding and shows in the exciting climax.