James Hilton

The modern classic about an idealistic British schoolmaster’s influence on his students: “A minor miracle” (The New York Times).
Throughout his forty-three-year tenure at Brookfield, “a good public school of the second rate” in eastern England, Arthur Chipping has been Mr. Chips to his students. From his unpolished first years during the Franco-Prussian War through the radical changes of the twentieth...

Lost Horizon is a 1933 novel by English writer James Hilton. It is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La, a fictional utopian lamasery high in the mountains of Tibet. Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the British diplomatic service, finds inner peace, love, and a sense of purpose in Shangri-La, whose inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity. Among the book's themes is an allusion to the possibility of another cataclysmic world war brewing, as indeed...

Fleeing war-torn China, a small planeload of people are hijacked to an idyllic valley in the Himalayas where time has virtually stopped. There Conway, a British diplomat, falls in love with a beautiful woman, and is asked to remain in Shangri-La as its new leader.