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James Hilton ( September 9 , 1900 – December 20 , 1954 ) was an Oscar -winning English Novelist , and author of several best-sellers including ''Lost Horizon'' (which popularised the mythical Shangri La ) and '' Goodbye Mr. Chips ''. BIOGRAPHY 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 the character of Mr. Chipping in '' Goodbye, Mr. Chips ''. (Hilton was born on Wilkinson Street in Leigh — there is a teacher in ''Goodbye, Mr. Chips'' called Mr Wilkinson.) The setting for ''Goodbye, Mr. Chips'' is believed to have been based on the Leys School , Cambridge , where James Hilton was a pupil. 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. 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. NOVELS Hilton found literary success at an early age. His first Novel , ''Catherine Herself,'' was published in 1920 , at the age of 20. 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 '' ( 1933 ), 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. The novel is said to be inspired by reading the National Geographic Magazine articles of Joseph Rock , an Austrian-American botanist and ethnologist exploring the Southwestern Chinese provinces and Tibetan Borderlands. OSCAR WINNER 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 '' (1948–53) 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 has been claimed that the isolated valley town of Weaverville, California , in far northern Trinity County , was an inspiration, but this is the result of a misinterpretation of a comment by Hilton in a 1941 interview, in which he said that Weaverville reminded him of Shangri-La. Coincidentally, Junction City (about 8 miles from Weaverville) now has a Tibetan Buddhist center with the occasional Tibetan monks in saffron robes. US President Franklin Delano 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
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 a grim story of legally approved lynching brought on by wartime hysteria in Britain. TRIVIA
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