FROM
Alison Jenner
alisonjenner@yahoo.com
Nevil
Shute weekend 07-08 May 2016, Isle of Wight
Dear friends,
I suggest that we meet for a "Mini-Nev" weekend on the Isle of
Wight Saturday
07 May - Sunday 08 May 2016.
We need to avoid the busiest days on the Island if we are going to
be able to get about.
I have booked some twin and double rooms at the Premier Inn,
Newport, IOW for us at a cost of £86 per room.
If there is a sufficient number interested in taking part I suggest
that those of us from the mainland meet in Southampton and car-share
on the ferry on
Saturday morning.
Please let me know straight away if you are keen to take part so we
can firm up our arrangements.
FROM John Anderson
j.c.anderson@mail.com
UK Book Group Meeting
The next meeting of the UK Book Group will be
on Saturday 12th March at Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington, York
The book to be discussed will be An Old Captivity.
Meet in the NAAFI at 12 noon.
See
www.yorkshireairmuseum.org/ for more details on the
Museum, location, exhibits etc.
FROM John Anderson
j.c.anderson@mail.com
The following email was send to our member
Nancy Anderson:
Official opening of Shute Drive,
Frankston, 1st March 2016
The official opening of “Shute Drive” was held
this morning, guests includedmembers from St Thomas Church,
Frankston Historical Society, Nevil’s Godchild – Margaret Folds
(Greenwood) and Local Langwarrin Sporting and Community
representatives.
I felt very humbled and delighted to meet up face to face with some
of the lovely local Langwarrin community who provided information
and supported me through the naming process.
Nancy provided us with a heartfelt and informative speech which was
captured by our media when she accepted the “sign-blade” from the
Mayor on your behalf.
I have attached a few photo-highlights from
today’s event.
Annie Flynn Governance Compliance Officer
Editor: the photos will appear on the website shortly
FROM Paul Spoff
paulspoff6@aol.com
"Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of
it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of
ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much
more difficult to fly there. "
FROM Charles D
dalsecl@prtel.com
An in-depth, detailed discussion of the current
state of the Airship business.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/a-new-generation-of-airships-is-born
The Blimp-Maker
Igor Pasternak, the C.E.O. and chief engineer of Worldwide
Aeros, is fulfilling his lifelong dream of creating aircrafts that
are lighter than air.
A few of the airship engineers I talked to lamented the fact that, until
1999, when a compilation entitled “Airship Technology” was
published, the only textbook available to them on airship
engineering was Charles B. Burgess’s “Airship Design,” which came
out in 1927.
In recent years, the aerospace heavyweights Boeing and Northrop Grumman
have developed airships; Russia, Brazil, and China have built or
conceived prototypes, and Canada has designs for a few of them,
including the Solar Ship, which looks like a bloated stealth bomber,
with solar panels spread across the top of helium-filled wings. All
are racing to be first to corner a cargo market that may be worth
billions. Three projects are currently attracting the most
attention: the Airlander 10, which is scheduled to launch next
month, in England; Lockheed Martin’s LMH-1; and Pasternak’s
Aeroscraft, the machine he first envisaged as a boy in Lviv.
An interesting blog that
brings up Shute
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/unsung-heroes/
Go to the Comments and
find “Mike Blamey”. Kind of poetic
I hadn’t seen this before, maybe others have???
http://www.wiete.com.au/journals/WTE%26TE/Pages/Vol.5,%20No.2%20(2006)/25_Oosthuizen23.pdf
FROM Simon Allen
sca@Heysford.co.uk
Dr Fopp writes a fascinating letter to us and I
am sure that we all appreciate the time and trouble he took.
To the point: "Just a theory, but I am surprised Nevil did not
write a novel on the theme!"
I suggest that if the events were as suggested, that Shute would
have never considered writing about them, even in the most veiled of
ways. Those that participated in covert operations rarely spoke
about them. There is a case of a man and woman who met whilst
working at Bletchley Park - but met outside and did not know it.
They were married for well over 40 years before they accidentally
discovered that they both worked there. Other examples have come to
light. My own father (RAF WWII in Night Fighters) did not speak
about many things until in his 70s.
Given that Shute felt so strongly about such matters,
had his journey involved such secondary activity, my guess is
that he would never have revealed it. Nor left any information to
survive him.
FROM Julian Starguard
stargardt.friends@gmail.com
Chequer Board / Purple Plain
My 8 year old son and I went to Myanmar (Burma)
for Chinese New Year. We went to visit my mother, an archaeologist,
who is excavating at the 2,200 year old ancient city of Sri Ksetra,
near Pyay between Yangon (Rangoon) and Pagan. Myanmar / Burma
is part of the setting for Chequer Board. So on our return when I
saw "Purple Plain" a 1954 Gregory Peck classic film about a RAF
pilot in Burma in the closing days of the 2nd World War, I had to
buy it. We watched it last night. Purple Plain is based on HE Bates
novel of the same name which like Chequer Board was published in
1947 and in part deals with similar material. We enjoyed the film
immensely and recommend it to Shutists for its parallels to Chequer
Board.
Like Chequer Board, a novel partly drawn on
Nevil Shute's experiences in Myanmar / Burma in the closing days of
the war, Purple Plain is drawn on H E Bates, who served with the
RAF, experiences of a visit to Myanmar / Burma in the closing months
of the war. Apparently Purple Plain is based on an experience Bates'
heard about while in Myanmar.
Myanmar is rated as among the world's poorer
countries and as a developing economy. But we loved it. The people
are friendly, dignified polite, gracious, and have a sense of self
respect. We did quite a road trip so had ample opportunity to
observe driving skills and habits. And we witnessed the most polite
driving I've ever seen anywhere in 47 years of living in Asia,
indeed anywhere in the world. None of the frenetic horn-honking,
aggression, or drive-as-fast-as-you-can that characterizes some
other countries driving styles. Instead a well mannered driving
style at sensible speeds and a tendency to obey rules-of-the-road.
Yangon (Rangoon) suffers from dense traffic during most day-light
hours and this climaxes during rush hour. But the traffic management
system of fly-overs and traffic lights keeps traffic moving and even
when traffic is barely creeping along or is stopped one doesn't
suffer the incessant honking that is so common elsewhere in similar
situations. Despite being low down in economic rankings, Myanmar
gives the impression of a country with great prospects. I was
particularly impressed by the irrigation system that the enables
rice cultivation.
How long the charm of the country will survive
the onslaught of foreign investment and tourism is anyone's guess
but for now it is a wonderful place to visit. Probably the best time
of year to visit is the Northern winter, say from November to
February when it is dry and cool at night and in the mornings but
hot during the latter part of the day. I'd suggest avoiding visits
during the rainy season, though there is nothing like a tropical
monsoon rain storm, and I love the first rains of the monsoon season
and the smells they bring out from the sunbaked earth.
Best wishes to all for a Happy Healthy and Prosperopus Year of the Monkey.
FROM Tom Wenham
tjwenham@gotadsl.co.uk
I know many Shutists share an interest in
engineering and having just read the three volumes of the
autobiography of L T C Rolt I can recommend these both for their
coverage of engineering in the nineteen-twenties and thirties and
for the parallels that Tom Rolt's career as an
engineer-turned-writer had with Shute's. The three
volumes, 'Landscape with Machines' (1971), 'Landscape with Canals'
(1977) and 'Landscape with Figures' (1992) are available in a single
volume as 'The Landscape Trilogy' (2001).
The landscape theme derives from the fourth of
Rolt's passions, the other three being vintage cars, steam trains
and narrow boats. The landscape, especially that
of the Welsh Borders where he was raised, was his great love and
throughout his autobiography he recounts the struggle he had to
reconcile his admiration for technological advances with the sure
knowledge that they would eventually be responsible for the
destruction of his beloved landscape.
Rolt was born in 1910 so he was a close
contemporary of Shute. He spurned his education at
Cheltenham College choosing instead to to take an apprenticeship at
a small engineering firm in Gloucester where he worked mainly on
steam-driven agricultural machinery. When this company
went under he completed his apprenticeship in Stoke-on-Trent with a
company building steam locomotives and where he also worked on the
development of the first diesel-engined lorry. On
completing his apprenticeship the depressed economy made it
difficult to find work and he became an engineering journeyman.
This ended when he and two friends bought a garage at Hartley
Witney, which they named Phoenix Green Garage, specialising in
vintage car repair and restoration. Phoenix Green
Garage remains a specialist in vintage cars to this day. It was at
this time that he and several like-minded enthusiasts started the
Vintage Car Club and he was also instrumental in acquiring the site
of the Prescott Hill Climb.
A believer in the dictum that when something
becomes an obsession it is time to focus your interest on something
else he bought a narrow boat on which he lived for several years
whilst travelling the inland waterways across the country.
He was a founder member of the Inland Waterways Association that set
out to resurrect the abandoned canals but fell out with them
spectacularly over the ultimate aims of the Association.
From narrow boats his attention shifted to railways and he became a
part of the team that rescued the Talylln railway.
Whilst Shute's career in engineering took a
completley different course to Rolt's both eventually turned to
writing as their sole means of earning a living.
Here again though Shute's and Rolt's writing careers differed as
Shute concentrated on fiction whilst Rolt specialised in
non-fiction, especially biography, his most successful being those
of Brunel, Telford, Trevithick and the Stephenson brothers.
The autobiography is beautifully written and
evokes times in this country when trains ran on small branch lines
and the roads were empty. Somewhat heavy on philosophy
at times, Rolt acknowledged that life was changing rapidly and, more
than anything, he rued the loss of engineering skills and
craftsmanship as they were superseded by button-pushing machine
operators and he mourned the loss of quality, both of the product
and of life, that was the consequence.
Rolt died in 1974 at the age of 64.
The third volume was written as Rolt knew he was dying and he
brought it to an end shortly before he died. The second
and third volumes were published posthumously by his widow.
I am now going to get started working my way through all Rolt's books.
FROM Eunice
Shanahan
ears@gil.com.au
I am very envious of the UK Book Group who have
chosen ‘An Old Captivity’ for their book this time, as that is
always in my top 5 for re-reading. But this will be an
incentive to me to take it down from the shelf and read it again.
We find it very frustrating that there are hardly any copies of his books to be borrowed from our local libraries, but when we made a request, they took some out of storage and put them on the shelves, and they were borrowed almost immediately. Probably a lot of older people remember reading them years ago. ‘ On the Beach’ was part of the required reading in Queensland Schools, perhaps because of the setting. I grew up in England, and only read it when I was reading all the Shute books I could find - yet that was one I found so depressing I have never read it again.
Some interesting articles this month. See you all next month.
