Monica Teasdale, a middle-echelon Hollywood actress.Marjorie Corder Airline stewardess with the fictional C.A.T.O (Commonwealth Atlantic Transport Organisation).Dennis Scott: Recently appointed head of the structural department at the RAE, a young aeronauticist Theodore Honey: A recently widowed worker at the Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough, Hampshire (RAE).Therefore, go forth, companion: when you find No Highway more, no track, all being blind, The way to go shall glimmer in the mind. The title is taken from the poem The Wanderer by John Masefield: Part of the novel is set in Canada which was very much "the Northern American land of dreams" for Shute since his visit there in the 1930s onboard R100.Ĭold War resonances are apparent in the book through the casting of the Soviet Union as villain. Comet is one of the twelve reindeer that pull Father Christmas' sleigh in Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem A Visit from St. The fictional aircraft of the novel is called a Rutland Reindeer, suggesting allusion to the Comet. The book was notorious in its time for appearing prescient of the disasters that would befall the de Havilland Comet Mk 1 airliner in the mid- 1950s. No Highway bravely addresses the complex issues of airliner safety at a time when air travel was a much more hazardous experience than it was to become by the end of the 20th century. Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
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