He is best remembered for his novels Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Random Harvest, as well as co-writing screenplays for the films Camille (1936) and Mrs. Miniver (1942), the latter earning him an Academy Award.

[3] Following this, 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).

Hilton is said to have been inspired to write Lost Horizon, and to invent "Shangri-La", by reading the National Geographic articles of Joseph Rock, an Austrian-American botanist and ethnologist exploring the southwestern Chinese provinces and Tibetan borderlands.

After the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, when the fact that the bombers had flown from an aircraft carrier remained highly classified, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the press facetiously that they had taken off from Shangri-La.

Zhongdian, a mountain region in the northwest of Yunnan province China, has been renamed Shangri-La (Xianggelila), based on its claim to have inspired Hilton's book.

Hilton wrote his two best remembered books, Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, while living in a house at 42 Oak Hill Gardens, in Woodford Green in northeast London.

[1] A heavy smoker, Hilton had various health problems when he made a farewell visit to England in 1954, and in December he died at his home in Long Beach, California,[13][14] from liver cancer, with his reconciled former wife Alice at his side.

It was licensed by the publisher William Morrow (an imprint of HarperCollins) and approved by the heirs to the Hilton Estate, Elizabeth Hill and Mary Porterfield.

In addition to its U.S. publication, the novel was further published in Germany, France, Spain and Portugal and Poland and (Eastern Europe)[15] was a New York Times Notable Book.

[16] A furore was caused in the late 1990s, when 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.

[17] In 1997, a blue plaque was erected on the wall of 42 Oakhill Gardens, Woodford Green,[18] the modest semi-detached house in which Hilton was living with his parents from 1921.