Part of the joy of having a historical interest is seeing the change in society.
The discovery of a pair of Airspeed ashtrays brings this to light.
It would seem almost inconceivable to give someone an ashtray as a gift in 2007 when every emphasis now is on giving up smoking but things were very different then.
Terry Miller, whose father worked at Airspeed, donated the ashtrays to the Nevil Shute Foundation. Mr Miller very generously refused any payment and the ashtrays will be safeguarded until an appropriate location can be found for our still small but slowly accumulating collection Nevil Shute memorabilia.
The ashtrays are of a compact stylish design with an art deco feel. Viewed from above, as they would be seen on a table, they are reminiscent of a three-bladed propeller spinner.
The ashtrays are approximately 3 3/4" across and 1 1/2" deep and appear to be made of brass and plated with nickel with 'Made in England' on the reverse.
Each is engraved with Airspeed (1934) LTD on the top and has three cigarette grooves around a smallish central ash hole, which give the propeller spinner impression I mentioned.
Hopefully, photos of the ashtrays will be on the website soon.
See also the page on the Virtual Museum for photographs
As part of her Australian trip for the Alice Springs Conference, Laura Schneider managed to get to Canberra in May to see the collection of Nevil Shute's papers held at The National Library in Canberra. Laura writes:
Today, I made it to the National Library, aka Mecca. This library houses many of Nevil Shute's original manuscripts, notes, correspondence, etc.
I was able to read through Shute's early notes on A Town Like Alice (a moment of silence please!!) plus other documents that clearly showed where he got ideas for many of his Australian based novels. As I've always told my students, write what you know! Shute certainly did that!
To be able to handle these documents, some tissue thin, was beyond amazing. I had goose bumps when I filled out the required request forms and they didn't go away for a long time. My hands were shaking when I opened the A Town Like Alice file. Opening that file was like finding the Holy Grail. One always hopes to learn new things but to be faced with information I never knew could possibly exist was shocking, rewarding and fantastic!
The afternoon was spent with my nose in the manuscripts...especially A Town Like Alice. I learned things I never knew I didn't even know!
For example, to read the many different possible titles was fascinating but the big moment was the discovery that Willstown wasn't the original name of the fictitious town! Who knew??
For the record, it's Adamstown. I wonder if there's a story behind the name or if it is random. My first thought is that it might have something to do with Adam being the first man created by God and that Jean was creating a new town from nothing.
My second thought was I'm reading too much into the name. The revelation of the name was great and I'm now curious as to why it was changed to Willstown. Probably the Wills and Burke thing.
Laura continues:
The unpublished short stories plus articles he wrote while waiting out his time in Calcutta (as WW2 was ending) are terrific. He wrote several stories and suggested publications for each of them, like Colliers, Atlantic Monthly. That Shute thought Pastoral wasn't a very good book but it was a wonderful piece of propaganda for the RAF was fascinating. He said he wrote the book in a hurry and called it a trivial little book. Wow! There wasn't nearly enough time to read everything but I took a lot of notes.
Intelligent, articulate and entertaining Australian cricket writer Gideon Haigh has written a very perceptive article on Nevil Shute and
On The Beach, which celebrates its 50th year of publication this year.
I hope to interview Mr Haigh for the newsletter soon but in the meantime I urge you to read his excellent article online
here.
Art Cornell writes:
We have new websites for the Nevil Shute Cape Cod Chapter and the Colorado Chapter. They were set up by my daughter Candace, and I am the webmaster.
They contain a history of the Chapter, the members and their email addresses, information about meetings and minutes of previous meetings.
If you would like help developing a similar chapter website, contact Candace Ruiz at cruiz@regis.edu.
She will even show you how to become the webmaster - meaning how you can modify and update the site.
Here are the links for
Cape Cod and Colorado
Periodically we hear of someone who once met someone who, they think, claimed to be a relative or cousin of Nevil Shute. I asked Shute's daughter Heather Mayfield to clarify the situation for me. Heather wrote:
Having no sisters or surviving brothers, my Dad had no nieces or nephews.
His first cousins were three ladies who never married and had no children, so there is nobody on his side of the family who can claim any close relationship.
Laura Schneider writes:
An mp3 CD with all the recordings from the conference is now available.
The disc has over 17 hours of recordings, complete with all of the Presentations, Discussions, Speeches, etc.
Following the precedent from previous conferences, these are for sale, with proceeds going to the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation.
Prices are:- $30 US, £15 GB, €22, $36 Australian (Prices include postage)
To order a CD from the USA or Australia email Laura Schneider
Subject = Legacy CD order
To order from the UK or Europe email John Anderson
Subject = Legacy CD order
Let them know how many copies you would like, your postal address, and they will indicate the method of payment.
We are now in the middle of winter here in Sydney but we are still having some beautiful days with quite warm daytime temperatures in between the cold snaps.
For a winter it is pretty good.
I apologise that the newsletter has been intermittent lately. You hadn't dropped off the mailing list.
I hope you are all well.
Richard Michalak
Write in if you want your name listed and would like to get together with other Shutists in your vicinity.
Jim Wells
lives in Lindfield, Sydney
Richard Michalak
lives in Paddington, Sydney
Ruth Pearson
lives in Adelaide
Neil Wynes Morse
lives in Canberra
Bruce A Clarke lives in Bangkok
Jim & Kristi Woodward
live in Broken Arrow (east of Tulsa), Oklahoma, USA.
Priscilla Pruitt
lives near Bellingham, Washington State
Bill McCandless
lives in Joliet near Chicago.
Joy Hogg, Harrietta Michigan (northern lower Michigan, near Traverse City and Cadillac)
David B. Horvath, dhorvath in the cobs.com domain, near Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA.
Al Benkelman
Warrenton, Virginia
Those who can come up with a better headline that somehow includes a hint at Airspeed, ashtrays and anything else Shute-ish are welcome to submit them for next month's newsletter.
The prize will be some grudging praise from me, and your name in the newsletter.