George falls in love with Olivia, though it scandalizes the townspeople, and eventually proposes to her. That night, she has an argument with her father. He has Dr. Richard Whiteside (Trevor Howard) drive him into town to speak to George, but they crash on a washed-out road and John is killed. Olivia then agrees to marry George.
Whiteside brings George an alarming report about the danger of an epidemic in the towns filthy slums. Mangin, who owns many of them, produces a more optimistic one. Given that Whiteside has taken to drinking heavily since the accident, George accepts Mangins report, causing the council to vote to do nothing. However, a diphtheria epidemic breaks out, just as Whiteside feared. A free clinic is opened to inoculate the healthy children and treat the sick. George tells Olivia to take their son there, but she cannot bear to do it, resulting in the childs death.
Many years pass. A widowed Olivia returns, takes up residence in her fathers mansion, and reopens the Channing mill. Her son becomes a flier in the Royal Air Force in World War II. On leave, he meets Julie and they fall in love.........

Born in Leigh, Lancashire, England, Hilton was the son of John Hilton, the headmaster of Chapel End School in Walthamstow. He was educated at Leys School, Cambridge and then at Christs College, Cambridge, where he was awarded an honours degree in English literature.
He wrote his two most remembered books, Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips while living in a house on Oak Hill Gardens, Woodford Green. The house still stands, with a blue plaque marking Hiltons residence.
He was married twice, first to Alice Brown and later to Galina Kopineck. Both marriages ended in divorce. He died in Long Beach, California, USA, from liver cancer.
Hiltons first novel, Catherine Herself, was published in 192, when he was 2. 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: This novel won him the Hawthornden Prize in 1934. Hilton is said to have been inspired to write Lost Horizon, and to invent "Shangri-La" by reading the National Geographic Magazine articles of Joseph Rock, an Austrian-American botanist and ethnologist exploring the southwestern Chinese provinces and Tibetan borderlands. Still living in Britain at the time, Hilton was perhaps influenced by the Tibetan travel articles of early travellers in Tibet whose writings were found in the British Library. Christian Zeeman, the Danish father of the mathematician Sir Christopher Zeeman, has also been claimed to be the model for the hero of the story. He disappeared while living in Japan (where his son was born in 1925), and was reputed to be living incognito in a Zen Buddhist monastery. Lost Horizon was published as the first title of Pocket Books in 1939, and is sometimes referred to as the book that began the paperback revolution.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips: Hiltons father, headmaster of Chapel End School in Walthamstow, was one of the inspirations for the character of Mr. Chipping in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, a best seller. Hilton first sent the material to The Atlantic and the magazine printed it as an article in April, 1934. It was then proposed to be printed as a book. On 8 June it was published as a book. Four months later it appeared as a book in England.
Hilton, who lived and worked in Hollywood beginning in the mid-193s, won an Academy Award in 1942 for his work on the screenplay of Mrs. Miniver, based on the novel by Jan Struther. He hosted The Hallmark Playhouse (1948ȓ1953) for CBS Radio. One of his later novels, Morning Journey, was about the movie business.