As far as I am aware, there are five biographies currently in print about British author Nevil Shute. Very soon I will re-read them all and upload some detailed notes.

The first is Slide Rule. This is an autobiography he wrote himself in the latter years of his career, but only covers up to the Second World War and nothing much is said or gleaned about his interesting new life choices thereafter.

The second is the Nevil Shute: a Biography by Julian Smith (1976). The last time I read it I noted its main thrust was in linking his real life with his fiction. He does not disclose any of his sources which frustrated further reading.

The third is Parallel Motion by John Anderson (2011). This is comprehensive and written by an engineer. I recall he was

The fourth is Shute by Richard Thorn (2017). Also comprehensive and v.g.

The fifth is Shute the Messenger by Graham Fricke (2012), which has been derided by many a member of the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation, but frankly I found very fascinating. The writer is a lawyer and has taken Shute’s many oddly-written legal papers as the prompt to start investigating him, leading to some dramatic conclusions that he was “self-centered but not selfish” and that his ornery nature and snobbish insistence on doing things the right way on his own more or less caused his wife to take her own life in the end. What could be a more dramatic tale?

There is another book called On the Beach: The Wit and Wisdom of Nevil Shute, which has a few insights but is little more than a collection of wise words and excerpts for mass market.