Ruined City is a 1938 novel by Nevil Shute, published by Cassell in the UK. In the US, the book was published by William Morrow under the title Kindling.
Ruined City is a 1938 novel by Nevil Shute, published by Cassell in the UK. In the US, the book was published by William Morrow under the title Kindling.
The story is set in the Depression years of the 1930s, when a rich London financier, Henry Warren, suffering from health problems and a broken marriage, decides to disappear from his old life, and travel incognito in the industrial North, now plagued with unemployment.
In the fictional town of Sharples, whose only shipyard has just closed, he is taken ill and admitted to hospital, where he is mistaken for one of the unemployed. After a successful operation, and a burgeoning friendship with Alice, the hospital’s almoner, he takes stock of the local situation, and resolves to use his wealth to help the community. Knowing that the shipyard is for sale at a knockdown price, he buys it secretly, but finds that he can only attract business from a dubious oil-rich Balkan state, in need of tankers. To float the new company, Warren must sign a prospectus, declaring falsely that the yard is well-placed to make a profit. But when the oil-state suffers a revolution, its business is lost, and the only way to save the yard is for Warren to take personal responsibility for the deception, earning him two years’ jail.
On his eventual release, he revisits Sharples, to find that the yard has managed to prosper, thanks to new rearmament projects, and the management has erected a bronze plaque, honouring his part in saving the local jobs. When he is recognised, the whole town rushes to greet him, including Alice who has been loyally awaiting his return. [1]
The book is loosely based on Shute's own experience at Howden in Yorkshire as Calculator of the R100 project [2] and his experience as a director of Airspeed Ltd. [3]
In 1935, Airspeed signed a manufacturing licensing agreement with Fokker and considered making the Fokker D.XVII fighter for Greece, who wanted to buy from Britain for currency reasons. Shute (now managing director) and a Fokker representative "who was well accustomed to methods of business in the Balkans" spent three weeks in Athens but did not close the deal. [4]
Airspeed Limited was established in 1931 to build aeroplanes in York, England, by A. H. Tiltman and Nevil Shute Norway. The other directors were A. E. Hewitt, Lord Grimthorpe and Alan Cobham. Amy Johnson was also one of the initial subscribers for shares.
Fokker was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer named after its founder, Anthony Fokker. The company operated under several different names, starting out in 1912 in Schwerin, Germany, moving to the Netherlands in 1919.
Anton Herman Gerard "Anthony" Fokker was a Dutch aviation pioneer, aviation entrepreneur, aircraft designer, and aircraft manufacturer. He produced fighter aircraft in Germany during the First World War such as the Eindecker monoplanes, the Dr.1 triplane and the D.VII biplane.
Nevil Shute Norway was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from inferences by his employers (Vickers) or from fellow engineers that he was '"not a serious person" or from potentially adverse publicity in connection with his novels, which included On the Beach and A Town Like Alice.
On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic novel published in 1957, written by British author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. The novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war the previous year. As the radiation approaches, each person deals with impending death differently.
Harold Warren Moon is an American former football quarterback who played professionally for 23 seasons. He spent the majority of his career with the Houston Oilers of the National Football League (NFL) and the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League (CFL). In the NFL, Moon also played for the Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks, and Kansas City Chiefs.
A Town Like Alice is a romance novel by Nevil Shute, published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman, becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II in Malaya, and after liberation emigrates to Australia to be with him, where she attempts, by investing her substantial financial inheritance, to generate economic prosperity in a small outback community—to turn it into "a town like Alice" i.e. Alice Springs.
Sir Alan John Cobham, KBE, AFC was an English aviation pioneer.
Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer is the partial autobiography of the British novelist Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1954. Slide Rule concentrates on Nevil Shute's work in aviation, ending in 1938 when he left the industry.
Trustee from the Toolroom is a novel written by Nevil Shute. Shute died in January 1960; Trustee was published posthumously later that year.
What Happened to the Corbetts is a novel by Nevil Shute, a fictional depiction of the effect of aerial bombing on the British city of Southampton, a major maritime centre. It was written in 1938, and published in April 1939 by William Heinemann Ltd, when the outbreak of World War II was already a very likely development.
John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including RMS Lusitania, RMS Aquitania, HMS Hood, HMS Repulse, RMS Queen Mary, RMS Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Elizabeth 2.
The Chequer Board is a novel by Nevil Shute, first published in the United Kingdom in 1947 by William Heinemann Ltd. The novel deals with the question of racism within the US forces during World War II and portrays black characters with sympathy and support.
Sherburn-in-Elmet Airfield is located 1.5 nautical miles east of Sherburn in Elmet village and 5.5 NM west of Selby, North Yorkshire, England.
So Disdained is the second published novel by British author, Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1928 by Cassell & Co., reissued in 1951 by William Heinemann, and issued in paperback by Pan Books in 1966. In the United States it was first published in 1928 by Houghton Mifflin in Boston, with the title The Mysterious Aviator.
Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards was an Australian soldier during World War II. As a prisoner of war (POW), he survived being crucified for 63 hours by Japanese soldiers on the Burma Railway. Edwards was the basis for the character "Joe Harman" in Nevil Shute's novel A Town Like Alice. The book was the basis for a film and a television miniseries (1981).
Charles Thomas Philippe Ulm AFC was a pioneer Australian aviator.
Portsmouth Airport, also known as Portsmouth City Airport, PWA and Hilsea Airport, was situated at the northeast Hilsea corner of Portsea Island on the south coast of England and was one of the last remaining commercial grass runway airports in the United Kingdom.
The Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation was an American corporation established in 1917 by railroad heir W. Averell Harriman to build merchant ships for the Allied war effort in World War I. The MSC operated two shipyards: the former shipyard of John Roach & Sons at Chester, Pennsylvania, and a second, newly established emergency yard at Bristol, Pennsylvania, operated by the MSC on behalf of the U.S. Shipping Board's Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC).
Lonely Road is a 1936 British drama film directed by James Flood and starring Clive Brook, Victoria Hopper, Nora Swinburne and Malcolm Keen. The film was released in the United States as Scotland Yard Commands.