During WWII, Nevil Shute moved from Portsmouth to the relative safety of Hayling Island, living at the Old Mill, Langstone, Langstone Place, and, after a period in which Shute was a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in Canada, at Pond Head House (pictured above).

Nevil Shute Norway (b. 17 Jan. 1899, Ealing, d. 12 Jan. 1960, Melbourne, Australia) was a British-Australian novelist, aeronautical engineer, and businessman, who wrote under the pseudonym Nevil Shute, and who is best known for the 1957 anti-nuclear war novel On the Beach, adapted for film two years later, and A Town Like Alice (1959), which also became a major movie success. Shute has significant Portsmouth connections, having lived and worked in the city for seventeen years, and his literary works abound with Portsmouth references.

After graduating from Oxford in 1922 with an engineering degree, Shute worked first at the De Havilland Aircraft Company and then, from 1924, with Vickers Ltd, where he worked on the R100 Airship project alongside the legendary Barnes Wallis. After the cancellation of Britain’s airship production in 1930, Shute co-founded the company Airspeed Ltd at Portsmouth Airport. Airspeed produced thirteen aircraft, most notably the Airspeed Oxford, first built in 1937 and continuing to fly with the RAF until 1956. Although the airport closed in 1973, some of its buildings survive, and Shute’s connections there are commemorated in four street names in the Hilsea industrial estate: Norway Road, Nevil Shute Road, Airspeed Road, and Marazan Road – the latter being related to the title of Shute’s first novel. Shute often drew upon his aeronautical expertise in his literary works.

Shute severed his connections with Airspeed in 1938 and resumed his career as a novelist after service in WWII. In 1948 he flew a Percival Proctor aircraft to Australia and back, and two years later emigrated to Australia, where his literary success grew in the final ten years of his life.

The Nevil Shute Foundation have produced a detailed guide to the author’s Portsmouth connections.

If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions in relation to the map please contact Dr Mark Frost, English Literature Department, University of Portsmouth: mark.frost@port.ac.uk