From Chris & Penny Morton
A reminder to Shutists planning to come to TAS 2013, "The Rainbow Connection".
THERE'S LESS THAN SIX WEEKS LEFT TILL CLOSE OF REGISTRATIONS (MID SEPTEMBER) ! Don't procrastinate and miss out on a fantastic week, celebrating Shute's Tasmania.
Most of the questions we've received have been about room bookings at The Old Woolstore, some apparently forgetting to mention the "SHUTE CONFERENCE" and the "CONFERENCE BOOKING NUMBER, 8434".
This information is available under "Important Information&qquot; on the Conference webpage, (www.tas2013.info) as well as below:
When booking a room at The Old Woolstore: Contact Courtney Bearman
State that you are attending the NEVIL SHUTE CONFERENCE
Give the BOOKING NUMBER, 8434
For seamless room bookings, it is essential to use the above. Hobart is hosting several other major functions that week, so virtually all hotels are already booked out! Other questions? Check out the Conference webpage for answers. Failing that, e-mail us: oldgaffers@gmail.com
We look forward to seeing you in October.
Till next month,
Cheers From Chris and Penny
From Julian Stargardt
Dear Shutists,
1948 - 1949 Nevil Shute Norway and James Riddell flew in Shute's newly acquired Proctor From the UK to Australia and back.... Their flight was an extraordinary adventure. Shute apparently kept a laconic Log but one can find the influences of this flight in many of his later novels, e.g. Round the Bend, Chequer Board, A Town Like Alice... James Riddell also kept a diary and took many photos, and his account of their odyssey is told and illustrated in the splendid "Flight of Fancy" published in 1950. Given the relatively short range of the Proctor, the flight consisted of a number of relatively short legs, mostly within Asia, at a time when the British colonies in South Asia were in the process of becoming independent or had just achieved independence and while in South East Asia Commonwealth troops were fighting a communist insurgency in the Malay Peninsular and the Dutch were fighting Indonesian Independence fighters for control of Indonesia.
I finally managed to get a copy of Riddell's "Flight of Fancy" recently and thoroughly recommend it to all Shutists as an intimate 3rd party insight into NSN's character and conduct, it will only leave you all the more impressed with what a fine person he was.
And for aviation enthusiasts in Australia there is a Proctor on display in the lobby of the National Museum in Canberra, it's hanging From the ceiling as if in low flight....
I extend a warm welcome to any Shutists visiting Hong Kong!
Best wishes,
Julian
From Sally M. Chetwynd
I sent some online shopping information to Tim Spencer who posted below about the location and cost of a copy of Shute’s Vinland the Good. I know most people who receive the newsletter are aware of The Paper Tiger Books, but they might need a reminder now and then.
I find also that a lot of people are not aware of Half.com, which a non-auction subsidiary of eBay, From which I have purchased a number of items over the past few years for a tiny fraction of their retail prices (sometimes the shipping fee costs more than the item). For any given item that someone searches for on Half.com, even if there is only one item listed, clicking on that will usually open up to a page with several of the item offered by different sellers, and often at a wide range of prices. I have not yet been disappointed with my purchases. This information may be of interest to the Shute newsletter folks.
I wonder if you might post in the next newsletter a prompt to Shute fans, or maybe a new section, that anyone who is looking for copies of specific Shute titles can post those titles in the newsletter, and those of us who have extra copies can contact them directly. I have a dozen extra Shute titles, mostly hardcovers, that I don’t need, but others might like to have. I often see the more popular titles in my used-bookstore and yard-sale travels, and don’t usually pick them up, but when I come across those titles that haven’t had the big publicity, I get them, figuring I’ll find a good home for them. About four years ago, I found a hardcover copy of “Kindling” at my local library book sale (I had never seen it in hardcover before), and snapped it up for $1 US.
From Dr. Deborah Vietor-Englaender
Regarding Pied Piper.
It is worth mentioning Nicholas Winton here. He got over 600 children out of Prague in 1939. He celebrated his 104th birthday recently and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He never told anyone what he did, not even his wife, she found all the documents in the attic.
I hope he gets the Peace Prize, my sister was one of the children he saved!
From Paul Spoff
This takes a long time to view---There are over a hundred pictures--Take a few at a time--or take a long rainy afternoon.
Incredible pictures! It is thought you may value them or have someone you want to share them with. There here stands our freedom and the men who fought for it and still do. God bless them. WWII in the Pacific.
CENSORED PHOTOS OF WW II ACTION IN THE PACIFIC
Many have not seen photography like this before. Beautiful, stark black & white pics, about 110 of them, of historical significance in this collection. For many of us, our fathers and/or grandfathers participated in this action. Today's generation really do not understand what their Grandfather's did - the extent of that war and the lives that were lost - sad memories
World War II: The Pacific and Adjacent Theaters.
blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/03/18/captured-blog-the-pacific-and-adjacent-theaters/#more-1547
From Richard Michalak
Shutists may appreciate seeing "The Sound Barrier". A hard-to-find David Lean film.
Some clips are available at this site and if you are cashed up you can buy a copy.
www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/316240/Sound-Barrier-The-Movie-Clip-Opening-Dover.html
If you can get the whole movie there is a fabulously mood-lit scene in a hangar with the deHavilland Comet.
The film is From 1952 and has that great British War Film flavour.
Sadly you can't even steal this film through pirate websites.
I haven't seen it in years.
Also worth seeing is this newsreel of the 1950 Farnborough Airshow.
When you read Round The Bend this is the world and these are the aircraft Shute is referring too.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbAqyHRSS8w
From Jim Wells
Here’s an interesting link.
Laura Schneider, who most of you know will be teaching a course about Nevil Shute, at iLead. (Institute of Lifelong Learning at Dartmouth USA). See page 15, of the catalogue: http://www.dartmouth.edu/ilead/docs/2013fallcatalog.pdf
That’s it for this month. A little late, because I have been away on holidays to the South of France for a week. I had a very nice time, and great weather. The weather is also very good, here in Holland, but maybe a bit too warm, for most Dutch people (36°C, 97°F, yesterday)
See you next month
We had a brilliant premiere of FALLOUT at The Melbourne Film Festival on Saturday Night. We have our second screening tonight and yesterday we also had a panel called Talking Pictures discussing FALLOUT and the film of ON THE BEACH and of course Mr Shute's life. Then at 6pm was the ON THE BEACH screening and it was sold out. Very happy about all of this.