Nevil Shute Norway died in Melbourne after a heart attack, 5 days short of his 61st birthday in 1960. He was born in London and gained an engineering science degree from Oxford. After a brief role with de Havilland Aircraft Company, he joined Vickers Ltd and rose through the ranks to become the chief engineer on the R100 dirigible project.

At age 32 he left Vickers and formed Airspeed Ltd which soon developed the “Airspeed AS.5 Courier”. A few years later, in 1934, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society for his work on the R100 and on the retractable undercarriage used on the Courier. Their “AS.6 Envoy” was a twin-engine light transport which was modified to become the “AS.10 Oxford” for WWII. It was widely used throughout the Commonwealth, mostly as a trainer. Almost 8,600 were built.

In 1948 at age 49 he flew, with a friend (British champion snow skier, James Riddell), his personal Percival Proctor single engine prop to Australia and back. A few years later he moved, with his wife and 2 daughters, to a farm at Langwarrin near Melbourne.

Under his pen name, Nevil Shute, he was one of the best-selling novelists of the 20th century. Of his 24 books, 7 became movies for the cinema or TV or both. His most popular stories are “A town Like Alice”, “Trustee from the Toolroom” and “On the Beach”.

You can find more about this remarkable aviator, sailor, adventurer, inventor, engineer, entrepreneur and author at https://nevilshute.org