James Hilton was born in Lancashire in 1900, the son of a headmaster. His best known books, Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr Chips, were written during the thirties, a period which afforded him great commercial success and enormous popularity. Lost Horizon was made into a blockbuster Hollywood film in 1937. For a time, Hilton was highest paid screen-writer in Hollywood and he won an Academy Award in 1942 for his work on the screenplay of Mrs. Miniver. Hilton continued to write novels throughout his career. He died in 1954.

Hilton's premise strikes a deep chord in today's 'everything is relative' society. His utopia retains all its charm and, in his creation of Shangri-La, he added something permanently to the language