Radio 4 has just finished Neville Shute’s No Highway as their classic serial for Sunday afternoons. I was much more intrigued by this than I expected to be in this old fashioned work, although as a youngster I was a keen consumer of his novels.
It is indeed very much a work of its time (1948) but the issues tackled are not; in particular it addresses the conflict between predictions of disaster based on theory, (in this case metal fatigue, which seemed to many to be eerily far sighted when the cause of the Comet crashes of the 1950s was discovered) & the need for empirical evidence of real risk before taking the expensive remedies recommended as essential.
It covers the problem of the socially inept boffin who is singularly lacking in social skills or emotional intelligence – though he loved his wife who lost her life in a bombing raid & has a touching though neglectful relationship with his 12 year old daughter.
The boffin is also interested in the supernatural – something not completely unknown among reputable & distinguished scientists at the time.
Home & family are important - & most definitely woman’s place; the grown up women in the story are helpmeets, there to provide the comforts & emotional intelligence; interestingly the young daughter is allowed to exhibit some of the other kind of intelligence, though she also struggles over problems of dish mops, hot water & making cakes.
It comes across as odd – even unforgivable – to modern ears that the cause of the problem was covered up by the authorities – national prestige, among other things, was at stake. But in 1948 the idea that some things needed to be kept secret - Walls Have Ears; Keep Mum – probably seemed just a part of the natural order of things.
