It is just faintly possible that somebody, reading and posting today, on this Forum owes his/her life to Neville Shute Norway.
Resmoroh

Nice one Res
posted as long ago as July 2009
this thread appeared recently in google blog alert
I could not immediately reply as it took ages for membership activation
Anyway along with my musical hero Gordon Lighfoot I can justifiably claim that Nevil shute helped save my life in 2000.
in 1999, based in the UK,I had found a Lightfoot chat room and met about 35 keen fans., including a most charming girl from New Jersey.
That year Gordon had a series of concerts in his home city of Toronto in November and most of us in the chat room decided to meet there at a Lightfoot convention
As the time drew near there was some worried chats on the subject that one of us might be an “axe murderer”.
I was getting very close to my NJ friend and in one chat she asked what was my favourite book, and I said Nevil Shute’s “A Town Like Alice”
Sshe went out and bought a copy and later confided that she concluded that if I liked that sort of book no way was I an axe murderer!!
Our meeting in November face to face was most successful. and she intended visiting me in the UK in February. but a few weeks before her visit I had a fairly mild stroke which after some time paralysed my left side (I was left handed) and the following evening not realising why I had trouble with my typing in the chat room. She picked up my by now erratic typing and begged me call a doctor (in the middle of the night in the UK).
We were married 6 months later and I came over to New Jersey where US doctors diagnosed severe artery blockage in my heart that the UK National Health doctors had missed resulting in a quintuple by pass operation.The fact that being in hospital for 3 months led to my quitting a life long tobacco habit helped too. So yes Nevil helped save my life
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk