Late great engineers: Nevil Shute Norway - a very novel design engineer

Throughout the history of the discipline there have been few professional engineers that can lay claim to being a mainstream literary figure, while an equally small number have risen to the status of genuine household celebrity for reasons other than their engineering achievements. But Nevil Shute Norway – better known to the filmgoing and novel-reading public simply as Nevil Shute – was both. The world may have forgotten that he was at one time Chief Engineer on His Majesty’s Airship R100 having worked under Sir Barnes Wallis (of bouncing bomb renown). But it will be a long time before his seminal A Town Like Alice and On the Beach – along with the classic movies based on them – are forgotten. At one point Shute was the best-selling novelist writing in English. All 25 of his books remain in print.

While immensely popular with readers the world over, Shute’s novels were often shunned by a literary establishment that in the 1950s – Shute’s defining creative period – gave more critical attention to the likes of William Golding, Graham Greene and even J.R.R Tolkien. Shute’s works were more pedestrian – the author himself described his characters as ‘ordinary people doing extraordinary things’ – and his values were resolutely middle class. One of his prevailing themes was how sturdy professionals (such as himself) contributed more to society than the aristocracy or the ruling elite. He explored the dignity of labour, social integrity and the importance of science and technology. His 1954 autobiography Slide Rule concentrates more on his work as an engineer than on his publishing career. And if the frequency with which he used the expression is an indicator of his faith in it, he certainly believed that an engineer ‘can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound’.