James Hilton

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James Hilton (September 9, 1900 - December 20, 1954) was a popular English novelist of the first half of the 20th century.

Born in Leigh, in Lancashire, England on 9 September 1900, he was the son of John Hilton, the headmaster of Chapel End School in Walthamstow. His father was one of the inspirations for Mr Chipping in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Hilton's most beloved novel. (Hilton was born on Wilkinson Street in Leigh - there is a teacher in Goodbye, Mr Chips called Mr Wilkinson, which seems too deliberate to be a coincidence.) The setting for Goodbye, Mr Chips is believed to have been based on the Leys School, Cambridge, where James Hilton was a pupil. Mr Chipping is also likely to have been based on W.H. Balgarnie, one of the masters of the school who was in charge of the Leys Fortnightly (where Hilton's first short stories and essays were published).

Hilton found literary success at an early age. His first novel, Catherine Herself, was published in 1920. Several of his books were international bestsellers and inspired successful film adaptations, notably Lost Horizon (1933), which won a Hawthornden Prize; Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934); and Random Harvest (1941). "Lost Horizon," which sold briskly in the 1930s as one of the first Pocket Books, is sometimes referred to as the book that began the paperback revolution.

Hilton, who lived and worked in Hollywood beginning in the mid-1930s, won an Oscar in 1942 for his work on the screenplay of Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. He hosted The Hallmark Playhouse (1948-1953) for CBS Radio.

He popularised the term "Shangri-La" in his novel Lost Horizon, which may have been inspired by the Tibetan travel articles of explorer Joseph Rock. It is also believed that the isolated valley town of Weaverville, California, in far northern Trinity County, was an inspiration. Coincidentally, Junction City (about 8 miles from Weaverville) now has a Tibetan Buddhist center with the occasional Tibetan monks in saffron robes. US President Roosevelt named his Maryland presidential retreat "Shangri-La" after it, and the name has become a byword for a mythical utopia - a permanently happy land, isolated from the world. (Later, President Dwight David Eisenhower renamed the retreat Camp David after his grandson, the name by which it is known today.) Zhongdian, a mountain region of southwest China, has now been renamed Shangri-La (Xianggelila), based on its claim to have inspired Hilton's book.

Hilton's books are sometimes dismissed as sentimental celebrations of English virtues. This is true of "Mr. Chips," but some of his novels had a darker side. Flaws in the English society of his time -- particularly narrow-mindedness and class-consciousness -- were frequently his targets. His novel "We Are Not Alone," despite its inspirational-sounding title, is downright grim, a story of legally approved lynching brought on by wartime hysteria in Britain.

He was married and divorced twice, first to Alice Brown and later to Galina Kopineck. He died in Long Beach, California from liver cancer on December 20, 1954, aged 54.

[edit] Trivia

Following the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942, when a force of normally land-based bombers were successfully embarked on and flown off an aircraft carrier, the Japanese were baffled as to how such aircraft were able to reach and bomb Japan, given that there were no American land bases within range at that time. President Roosevelt claimed that the aircraft had flown from Shangri-La. Later, an Essex class aircraft carrier was named 'Shangri-La', commemorating both the raid and the witticism.

A furore was caused in the late 1990s, when the Wigan Council (the Metropolitan Borough responsible for Leigh) announced that a blue plaque in honour of Hilton would be placed not on his house in Wilkinson Street, but on the town hall. This caused great debate amongst the populace of Leigh, which considered it more appropriate to have it on the house itself, which is only a few hundred yards from the town hall.