Nevil Shute Norway was born in 1899 in Ealing London. In 1918 he completed training at the Royal Military Academy. Whilst at Oxford he worked unpaid at the de Havilland Aircraft Co. and joined them full time on completion of his degree and learned to fly. It was also at this time that he began writing novels. In 1924 he joined Vickers as Chief Calculator and worked on the R100 airship alongside Barnes Wallis and was on board the successful flight of that airship to Montreal, Canada in August 1930. In his book Slide Rule which charts his work on the airship he was highly critical of the R101.
During his time working on the R100 his writing took off and he began to have some of his novels published under the name of Neville Shute. Following the crash of the R101 and the end of the airship programme he established his own aircraft construction company, Airspeed Ltd, which was highly successful. However, in 1938, he left the company and with the outbreak of war in 1939 he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and worked in the Admiralty’s Miscellaneous Weapon Development Department.
When the war was over, he moved to Australia and concentrated on his writing and produced some very successful books most notably A Town Like Alice and On the Beach, both made into films. He died in 1960 but his books are still well known today.