a damn sight too clever, and Antony says he won’t come back as she hopes; he urges her to write to Dennison which she does; a very long letter. She tells her brother that she had to have a shot at piloting him out (of Hong Kong; a reference to the book title?). At the end she says that she wrote to him before she heard of the test flight saying she had changed her mind, and he tells her the Hong Kong scheme is off. He has a good job with Fisher, sailing his yacht Chrysanthe at Cowes in season and working in the Fisher Line legal department for an old chap ... And it’s the work I’m keen on. Rawdon and Morris watch them sitting in the sandhills: Rawdon says They don’t want any breakfast. Publishing History The introduction says that the two complete novels were left in his papers when he died in 1960. The publisher and family (Heather Felicity Norway) decided to publish them as: They are good stories in themselves, and published in one volume because of the continuity of some of the characters – particularly Stephen Morris – through both. Not only do they provide evidence of Shute’s fine narrative gift, but they each contain strong personal elements which readers will find an interesting supplement to the author’s autobiography, Slide Rule. Shute himself wrote about them that: I finished my first novel in 1923, sent it to three publishers, and put it on the shelf, where it will remain because it is a very poor book. I read it the other day after brushing off the dust of nearly thirty years, or rather skimmed it through; I don’t thing anyone would have the patience to read the whole thing. I doubt very much, if any, of it was written twice; the evidence of the type was against that, and the timing. I wrote another one in 1924 which was equally bad, and again I was content to put it on the shelf and do something else. They were typed on an old Blick portable: he said it may not be quite a coincidence that his first published novel Marazan was written on a brand new typewriter. Both novels are short: 140 pages (Stephen Morris) and 129 pages (Pilotage). There are some discrepancies which may have been removed if proofread: Stenning switched off the engine