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Summary
Summary
One of Nevil Shute's most exciting novels, Pied Piper is the gripping story of one elderly man's daring attempt to rescue a group of children during the Nazi invasion of France.
It is the spring of 1940 and John Sidney Howard wants nothing more than to enjoy his fishing holiday in southern France in peace and quiet. However, the Nazi conquest of the Low Countries puts an end to that, and he is asked by friends to take their two children back to England. Crossing France with his young charges seems simple enough at first--until the Germans invade, rendering them fugitives. As Howard struggles to sneak across France, he picks up several more helpless children of various nationalities. They walk for miles in an endless river of refugees, strafed by German planes and hiding in barns at night. By the time Howard and his flock of little ones reach the Channel, his plan of escaping on a fishing boat has become utterly impossible, and in their final confrontation with the invaders, all their lives are at stake.
Author Notes
Nevil Shute Norway was born in Ealing, London, England, on January, 17 1899. At the age of 11, Norway played truant from his first preparatory school in Hammersmith. After he was discovered, he was sent to the Dragon School, Oxford, and from there to Shrewsbury. He was on holiday in Dublin at the time of the Easter rising of 1916 and acted as an ambulance driver, winning a commendation for gallant conduct.
He then entered the Royal Military Academy, intending to be commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps, but a bad stammer led to his being failed at his final medical examination and returned to civil life. The last few months of the war were spent on home service as a private in the Suffolk Regiment.
In 1919, Norway went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a third class honors course in engineering science in 1922. During the vacations he worked, unpaid, as an aeronautical engineer, for the Aircraft Manufacturing Company at Hendon, and then for Geoffrey de Havilland's own firm, which he joined as an employee upon finishing at Oxford. He learned to fly and gained experience as a test observer. During the evenings he diligently wrote novels and short stories unperturbed by rejection slips from publishers.
In 1924 Norway took the post of Chief Calculator to the Airship Guarantee Company, to work on the construction of the R100. In 1929 he became Deputy Chief Engineer under Barnes Wallis, and in the following year he flew to and from Canada in the R100. After the end of the airship project, jobs were hard to come by due to the depression so Shute started an aircraft manufacturing company, Airspeed Limited. This company was ultimately successful and built a large number of aircraft during the war. Shute remained joint managing director until 1938. When the business became too routine, he decided to get out of the rut and live by writing. The de Havillands, the first aviation job Shute had ever had, wound up buying Airspeed Ltd. He had by then enjoyed some success as a novelist and had sold the film rights of Lonely Road and Ruined City.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Norway joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Miscellaneous Weapons Department. Rising to Lieutenant Commander, he found experimenting with secret weapons a job after his own heart. But he found that his growing celebrity as a writer caused him to be in the Normandy landings on 6th June 1944, for the Ministry of Information, and to be sent to Burma as a correspondent in 1945. He entered Rangoon with the 15th Corps from Arakan.
Soon after demobilisation in 1945 he emigrated to Australia and made his home in Langwarrin, Victoria. His output of novels, which began with Marazan (1926) continued to the end. Shute was one of the leading aeronautical engineers in Britain during the 30's and a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. When he began writing in the 20's, he feared that a reputation as a writer of fiction might harm his engineering career. For this reason he published under his two Christian names, Nevil Shute and engineered under his "real" name, Nevil S. Norway.
Nevil Shute Norway died in Melbourne on January, 12 1960.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One His name is John Sidney Hoard, and he is a member of my club in London. I came in for dinner that night at about eight o'clock, tired after a long day of conferences about my aspect of the war. He was just entering the club ahead of me, a tall and rather emaciated man of about seventy, a little unsteady on his feet. He tripped over the door mat as he went in and stumbled forward; the hall porter jumped out and caught him by the elbow. He peered down at the mat and poked it with his umbrella. 'Damned thing caught my toe,' he said. 'Thank you Peters. Getting old, I suppose.' The man smiled. 'Several of the gentleman have caught their foot there recently, sir' he said. 'I was speaking to the Steward about it only the other day.' The old man said: 'Well, speak to him again and go on speaking till he has it put right. One of these days you'll have me falling dead at your feet. You wouldn't like that to happen--eh?' He smiled quizzically. The porter said: 'No, sir, we shouldn't like that to happen.' 'I should think not. Not the sort of thing one wants to see happen in a club. I don't want to die on a doormat. And I don't want to die in a lavatory, either. Remember the time that Colonel Macpherson died in the lavatory, Peters?' 'I do sir. That was very distressing.' 'Yes.' He was silent for a moment. Then he said: 'Well, I don't want to die that way, either. See he gets that mat put right. Tell him I said so.' 'Very good, sir.' The old man moved away. I had been waiting behind him while all this was going on because the porter had my letters. He gave them to me at the wicket, and I looked them through. 'Who was that?' I asked idly. He said: 'That was Mr. Howard, sir.' 'He seemed to be very much concerned about his latter end.' The porter did not smile. 'Yes, sir. Many of the gentlemen talk in that way as they get on. Mr. Howard has been a member here for a great many years.' I said more courteously: 'Has he? I don't remember seeing him about.' The man said: 'He has been abroad for the last few months, I think, sir. But he seems to have aged a great deal since he came back. Getting rather frail now, I'm afraid.' I turned away. 'This bloody war is hard on men of his age,' I said. 'Yes, sir. That's very true.' I went into the club, slung my gas-mask on to a peg, unbuckled my revolver-belt and hung it up, and crowned the lot with my cap. I strolled over to the tape and studied the latest news. It was neither good nor bad. Our Air Force was still knocking the hell out of Ruhr; Rumania was still desperately bickering with her neighbours. The news was as it had been for three months, since France was overrun. I went in and had my dinner. Howard was already in the dining-room; apart from us the room was very nearly empty. He had a waiter serving him who was very nearly as old as he was himself, and as he ate his dinner the waiter stood beside his table and chatted to him. I could hardly help overhearing the subject of their conversation. They were talking about cricket, re-living the Test Matches of 1925. Because I was eating alone I finished before Howard, and went up to my bill at the desk. I said to the cashier: 'The waiter over there--what's his name?' 'Jackson, sir?' 'That's right. How long has he been here?' 'Oh, he's been here a long time. All his life, you might say. Eighteen ninety-five or ninety-six he come here, I believe.' 'That's a very long time.' The man smiled as he gave me my change. 'It is, sir. But Porson--he's been here longer than that.' I went upstairs to the smoking-room and stopped before a table littered with periodicals. With idle interest I turned over a p Excerpted from Pied Piper by Nevil Shute All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
