On the Beach

Nevil Shute was one of the most successful novelists of the 20th century. He was born in London in 1899, studied at Oxford and became an aeronautical engineer before turning to fiction. He joined the Royal Navy during World War II. After the war Shute migrated to Australia, where he died in 1960 having written more than 20 books, the best known of which are A Town Like Alice and On the Beach.

Gideon Haigh has been a journalist for forty years, contributed to more than a hundred newspapers and magazines, and published fifty books, including thirty-one about cricket. He is half of the podcast Cricket Et Cetera/Et Al (with Peter Lalor).