About Nevil Shute

Lou Remington, the main character and witness to the whole airship saga in The Airshipmen, is entirely fictional. He was born in Great Falls, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. and raised mostly there on his grandmother’s farm. At the age of 16, he escaped his overbearing father by joining the Marines. He served in World War I in France, narrowly escaping death more than once. He came home and promptly joined the Navy in order to fly airships - ‘the next big thing’.

After a terrible accident while working abroad and falling in love with a beautiful English girl, he decided to remain in England and settle down. Later, he became involved in the British Airship Program, where he befriended Nevil Shute. These two characters play off one another with Lou, the droll American, always ready with a quip for the nerdy Englishman in his Harris Tweed jacket. The juxtaposition of them was pleasurable to write, since I have had similar experiences as a Brit in America and my children being Americans in England.

Nevil Shute was an aeronautical engineer who worked on the great British Airship R100, which I refer to as the Howden R100. After Barnes Wallis moved on to design aeroplanes, Shute was left in charge of that ship’s completion, under the auspices of the government team at Cardington in Bedfordshire. Shute’s full name was Nevil Shute Norway, but he dropped his surname when he began publishing novels in order to protect his identity as an engineer. He became the most popular author in the world for a time with some of his twenty-four novels being made into films, such as A Town Like Alice, No Highway and On the Beach (which starred Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire). Many of his themes embraced the paranormal, psychic phenomena and reincarnation, subjects that have always fascinated me and which I have brought into The Airshipmen.

Shute was an interesting character who, as a boy, actually found himself standing on the street in Dublin near the post office when the Irish rebelled against British troops during the Easter Rising. His father was the postmaster at that time, sent from England as an administrator. Shute helped care for the injured that day, working as a stretcher bearer.

He had a bad stutter and was treated badly at school, not only by his fellow students but by the teaching staff as well. Consequently, he used to play hooky, taking the train to the British Museum, where he spent much of his time—not altogether wasted as it turned out!

Shute lost his brother in WWI and, like most other kids of that era, thought it inevitable that he would be sent off at eighteen to the Front to be slaughtered. As it turned out, he was not sent and survived the war to go on to Oxford. After working for de Havilland Aircraft Company, he was selected by Barnes Wallis to assist in the design of R100 as Chief Mathematician. Later, he went on to form his own small aircraft company. One of the company’s designs was used as a trainer for RAF pilots preparing for WW II, with more than 8,000 being produced. He kept up with his writing and after getting sick of being overtaxed by the government, moved to Australia where his writing career flourished and he was able to keep most of his own money.

I hope that I have portrayed Nevil Shute well. I think of him as clever, courageous and loveable—a charming man who could be witty. I believe, overall, he would have been happy with my take on him—I hope so. In fact, there were times I felt he may have been looking over my shoulder!