Backlisted - Lost Horizon by James Hilton

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

Music producer, gallery owner and now novelist Tot Taylor joins John and Andy to discuss James Hilton's 1933 novel about an earthly paradise in the far Himalayas. And the various iterations of the story that came after.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)4'22 - Lifting the Latch: A Life on the Land by Sheila Stewart11'19 - Hearing Secret Harmonies by Anthony Powell22'28 - Lost Horizon by James Hilton* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. And then I had this lovely two-hour chat with Kurt Tot over where he talked me through... Not that I ever need to know why the Beatles are the best band, but he actually gave me precise musical reasons. He also said the thing that has completely obsessed me...

Tot is here, everyone. But completely obsessed me ever since Tot is here but completely obsessed me ever since he said nobody can cover the Beatles they're always shit Beatle covers are always

shit covers that's fucking tall challenge it then okay I will give you I'll tell you a good one the late

Fats Domino there's a version of everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey from the White Album by Fatsino which the beatles themselves felt was superior to their own version i'm just saying i think that i think that is brilliant i even i mean i didn't know that but

what i mean is when people do yesterday or if they do you know i want to hold your hand or they do she loves you there's some weird reason which Todd was really interesting about why there's some sort of weird DNA thing in the Beatles that makes them difficult it's the personality that we love we're in love with the Beatles personalities

charisma and as a group it's like a guru thing they call us white bearded and blinkered, but I think we're opening this up wide open. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. We're gathered in a hotel suite

just down the strasser from Berlin, Tempelhof, killing time before waiting for the first train out of Mitteleurop in the morning. The suite is on the tab of Unbound, the website which brings authors and readers together to create something special. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously.

And joining us today is Tot Taylor. Tot, hello. Hello. Tot is a writer, composer and art curator. He first came to public prominence as head of the Compact organisation. Now those of us of a certain vintage and with fine taste will recognise the Compact organisation as one of the best, best and most interesting labels of the early 1980s. Thank you very much. 1981 to 1985. Right, hooray.

And you were saying that it's coming back. It's coming back. It's coming back with this little thing. Actually, I didn't know you were going to say that, but I've got it in my pocket. Werner Lindt, Attention Stockholm. Attention Stockholm by Werner Lindt. Yeah.

Oh, great. It's yours. It's yours, Andy. Oh, thanks. It's yours. What about that? Live free gift. It's mine, Matthew. You, great. It's yours. It's yours, Andy. Oh, thanks. It's yours. What about that? Live free gift. Free gift.

Thank you so much, Tot. Tot has also, and Tot can just do what he wants now. Tot has curated exhibitions, and he's also the author, according to the script I have in front of me, of a thousand word long debut novel. But I believe it's actually. Thous long debut novel but I believe it's actually a thousand page long I have in front of me some green which is published by Unbound how long does it take

how long does it take you to finish the novel? It took 12 years to write it honestly and it took a year for the copy editor to figure it out honestly and it took a year for the copy editor to figure it out. Honestly. It did. Honestly, it is.

The story of John Knightley. It is. There are two books that I feel at Unbound that we published that I really think add to the growing pool of great fiction. I think The Weight by Paul Kingsnorth is one, and I think Tot's book, The Story of John Knightley, is another. And the fact that people haven't read it is entirely down to the fact that people look at 1,000 pages and think, fuck.

But you should. I eagerly await your 1,000-word follow-up. Do you know what? That works for you. If it was 1,000 words, everyone would have read it. Thank you, Matt. We're going to do that version. But you, Andy, have something to say to me, don't you?

I do indeed. What, I wonder, have you been reading this week? And I have a fulsome answer for you. I've been reading, I say, Comfort Read this week, a book that is one of my very favourite books. I wanted to do it when we did our oral history episode but I felt we'd had at that stage possibly we'd been there have been too many Shepherds and I hang on is this a shepherd book this is the memoir this is the lifting the latch a life on the land by Sheila

Stewart based on the life of Mont Abbott of Enston, Oxfordshire, who was a carter and a shepherd. And it is absolutely... I mean, I don't think there are many... If you want rural, first-person singular memoirs, Sheila Stewart, obviously Mont didn't write himself, but he recorded tapes with her and she's turned she's turned this into a truly in first person turned it into a wonderful book now the

reason I wanted to is the village I live in Great Chew in Oxfordshire when I was a student I used to come up and go to the pub particularly on a Sunday because there's a folk night on the Sunday and it's there's still a folk night on the Sunday it And there's still a folk night on the Sunday. It's still excellent. But I once saw this man, a very old man, with a lapel, a carnation in his lapel. And it was one of the most incredible... I mean, he had an incredible tenor voice.

And he sang, I mean, amazing sequence of English folk songs. And he was natty suit, I mean, immaculately turned out. And I just remember, I said, who the hell, who was that? And they said, oh, that's Mont Abbott. He's from Enston. I said, oh, he's incredible.

Is he a singer? No, he's a shepherd. He just lives over. He died in 1986, I think. So before I'd moved to the village. But I gave this book a couple of weeks ago to a friend who lives in the village who's a stonemason

retired now and he came to me at the weekend in tears saying I can't believe I've never read this book before it's it's

it is it's not a complicated book but it is absolutely the best record Mont was born in 1902. I'm going to read you a little... Well, I could read you the bit about when his fiancée dies because she gets caught in a snowdrift and dies of pneumonia.

But I think I might just read the end of it because it's written in his voice and it's a voice that's very familiar because I live in this area. But it's just a brilliant bit of social history. It's an odd thing. I mean, it's not a work of literature in that, you know, you're not going to... Nobody's going to be kind of exerting it,

but what it is is a story of complete authenticity. And what Sheila Stewart has done, who is an interesting woman in her own right, she was... I love her biography. She's born illegitimate in 1928. Sheila Stewart counts herself lucky to have been brought up by the Waifs and Strays Society. She became a teacher, and then she did, she wrote, she specialised in oral histories, basically. I'm not even sure if she's still alive, but if she is still alive, this book has given me more,

actually more pleasure than many of the great works of literature I've ever read. Mont was kind of, he, his fiance died, he then fell down a well. One of the wonderful things in the book is he has a recurring nightmare of falling into a dark hole.

And then it happens. And he recovers, and he thinks it's all going to be right and then the the doctor rather cruelly and brutally says to him he says you planning to have any babies mom and he says uh well i'm planning to get married and this is after his fiancee had been killed died i'm planning to have he said well i'm afraid that ain't gonna happen because you um you're not being able to have children so it's a, I mean just a horrible moment in the book where he realised, he's fallen to well and he's hit a bar of metal

side saddle and as he said, back in those days but back now you might have been able to do something but then they couldn't so he said even if I'd married Kate I'm thinking of her lying in the ground and I wouldn't have been able to do anything, so of course what he becomes is this wonderful it's it's honestly he he is everybody's favorite grandfather the book is full of it's it's it's wise and lovely and I'll just

read you the last the last bit which is Mont telling you about I ain't never been to the pictures I went once but I never out. It were a book she propaganda picture on by a government during the Great War. I drove a wagonette chock-a-block with Enston folk. When we got to the Oddfellows Hall in Chippy, Chippy Norton, of the famous set,

where it were being showed, there were nowhere left to graze my horses. It'd be too long to leave them standing all that time. I stopped with them and took them cropping along the verge. I ain't never had no holiday, set when I'm out of my death at Worthing. I don't hanker after flitting abroad and Colatelli. I ain't never fled in an aeroplane, don't want to, too far to drop. What you never had, you never miss. You've had a hard life, folks say. Looking back on my career in on the land, Carter, shepherd, gardener, I'd be well content. I didn't say I'd enjoyed every minute of it,

tent much of a picnic in your lunch in the burrow of a barbed wire fence, but ploughing, penning, planting, I've scratched old England on the back and hers give me wealth untold. Rosa still fetches me every morning. Her still won't give I the sack. And sometimes her drives me right round the world My world Hanborough

Glympton Whiteway Bottom Pee-Wick Corner Rollwrights Twins Neat Enston Church Enston Sand Peace Air Enston

Air Oxfordshire This England Take a lot of beating Blessed is the man that stoppeth where he be I ain't been so well lately Doctor says I could pop off any day. They ask me if I made a will. I ain't got nothing to will,

except this old pocket watch, my shepherd's crook, my folding bar, my wheelbarrow. Them like me now, out of date, antique, ought to be in a museum.

They ask me what I'd like to put on my tombstone when I snuffs it. For why? I ain't nobody famous to sign off with a flourish. People just might ask, who were you? Just scratch, Oldmont, Enston, Oxon, England. I reckon that'd answer. And that is exactly what he has on his gravestone.

Wow. It's just a love. It's sort of a round of applause around the table. It is a sort of classic of its kind. And what she does, which I love, is she doesn't... It's his voice through the book. You really feel a bit overcome now. I can't follow that.

And the good news is it's still in print, 899, Oxford University Press. It is a sort of a classic of its kind. Lifting the Latch, Sheila Stewart. Great. Andy, what have you been reading last year? Oh, thank you. How did you know? How did you tell?

So we're recording this in December 2017. And I have just finished, I finished a couple of days ago, a book entitled Hearing Secret Harmonies, which is the 12th and final volume of Anthony Pohl's A Dance to the Music of Time. And I have been reading A Dance to the Music of Time all year, one volume a month. I really...

Why are you shaking your head, Matt? I really... It's been fantastic. It's been one... It's been fantastic. I've mentioned it a couple of times on here, one volume a month. Why are you shaking your head, Matt? It's been fantastic. I've mentioned it a couple of times on here, but I've kept quiet about it. I'll tell you for why. Are you writing about it? Well, no.

What happened was, you may recall that about a year ago, we talked about this before, and I won't dwell on it, but about a year ago, our mutual friend David Miller died and uh in the last couple of years particularly on the occasions that I saw David he would say to me have you started reading a dance to the music of time yet because it was one of his favorite books and uh I hadn't and uh so what I decided I would do uh this is read the whole thing, one volume a month, as a way of keeping David in mind all year. And it's been really a brilliant experience to read the book. I'm a bit sad now because having finished it, of course, I can't talk to him about it. There's a piece in the TLS this week, there's a review of the new biography of Pole

by Hilary Sperling by A.M. Wilson in which A.M. Wilson says correctly who reads A Dance to the Music of Time now? It was considered so important in the era it was published which was the 50s through to the 1970s. It has

fallen from public view somewhat because superficially it seems to be a long involved chronicle of a particular class in england which has i suppose passed from prominence anyway it's it's about the upper middle and upper classes um but are there so i've weirdly i've always i've always wanted to do it and i was kind of inspired by your i think i'm going to start in january and do next year what you've done this year well because i've always wanted i've always wanted to read it and I've always had that slight suspicion that it is, you know, another bunch of, you know,

toffs being, you know, dull. All I'm going to say about it, all I'm going to say about it is that... I'm interested to know whether it transcends its sort of... I mean, somebody said to me, which is very cruel, he said, yeah, it's like Woodhouse without the laughs. That's not... Which is obviously crap. That's is obviously crap not that that is neither fair nor accurate um erudite but

blinkered i would just say that but i would say the thing that he had that he has in common with any great writer and if anything is perhaps somewhat more acute than many great writers, is a terrific comic apprehension of personality and behaviour caused by personality. So was it an Andrew Davis series? It was Channel 4, wasn't it, about 20 years ago? And I can remember looking at it and thinking, series was it was it was a adaptive channel four wasn't it about 20 years ago yeah um and i i can remember looking at it and thinking but you know it's my my problem with that is a bit like i can't

abide any of the adaptations of gatsby they're just all terrible we're going to come on to adaptations aren't we later in the episode it just all seemed to me to be terrible because the the the joy of gatsby is in the language. And what I feel about Pohl is that... Or Powell, whatever Pohl was supposed to say. Is that he just seems to me to be... And I love the whole story, having read the reviews of the Spurling, is he came to this very late. He was a bit of a...

His life was sort of going nowhere, and then he started to do this thing. I'm not sure that it brought him massive wealth or riches, but... I mean, I'm slightly holding back because I think there's a good chance that we might do a poll on Batlisted and we might even try and do a Dance of the Music of Time on Batlisted because, partly for the reason that it was so critically acclaimed in its era and deemed so important and deemed one of the great achievements

of post-war English letters, and it's clearly not seen that way anymore. But I also have to say, John, I tried reading this in my 20s... And it didn't work. ..and failed and it didn't work. Coming back to it in my late 40s, it seems so, so different as a reading experience. I'm glad I didn't read it when I was younger.

I got so much out of it this year and I've so enjoyed reading it, I'm writing something at the moment about it anyway, what I thought was what I thought I would do is read the beginning of the whole of A Dance to the Music of Time so that if you, the listener, anyone

listening to this podcast in January 2018 has got a head start on Anyone listening to this podcast in January 2018 has got a head start on A Dance to the Music of Time. You will have inhaled the opening of A Dance to the Music of Time. You will have started reading it almost against your will. And so you can proceed from there. So I'm just going to read the first couple of paragraphs.

I think you will get the feel for it from this alone. One. The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of camp for themselves where marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane lamps an abyss in the road led down to a network of subterranean drain pipes. Gathered around the bucket of coke that burned in front of the shelter, several figures were swinging arms against bodies and rubbing hands together with large pantomimic gestures, like comedians giving formal expression to the concept of extreme cold. One of them, a spare fellow in blue overalls taller than the rest, with a jocular demeanour and a long pointed nose like that of a Shakespearean clown suddenly step forward and as if performing a rite cast some substance, apparently the remains of two kippers loosely

wrapped in newspaper, on the bright coals of the fire causing flames to leap fiercely upward, smoke curling about in eddies of the northeast wind. As the dark fumes floated above the houses snow began to fall gently from a dull sky each flake giving a small hiss as it reached the bucket the flames died down again and the men, as if required observance were for the moment as an end all turned away from the fire lowering themselves laboriously into the pit

or withdrawing to the shadows of their tarpaulin shelter the grey, undecided flakes continued to come down though not heavily while a harsh odour bitter and gaseous penetrated the air the day was drawing in. For some reason the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world. Legionaries in sheepskin warming themselves at a brazier, mountain altars where offerings glow between wintry pillars, centaurs with torches cantering beside a frozen sea, scattered, uncoordinated shapes from a fabulous past, infinitely removed from life and yet bringing with them memories of things real and imagined. These classical projections and something in the physical

attitudes of the men themselves as they turn from the fire suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythms the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of time brought thoughts of mortality, plays. The image of time brought thoughts of mortality, of human beings facing outward like the seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape, or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again once more giving pattern to the spectacle unable to control the melody

unable perhaps to control the steps of the dance. Classical associations made me think too of days at school where so many forces hitherto unfamiliar had become in due course uncompromisingly clear now come on come on come on undecided flakes that's good some people would say read the whole thing in one go i i really enjoyed taking a break between each volume to let each volume settle then because Pohl wrote

each volume a few years apart you pick up with the characters again several years down the line and what the book does is tell the story of 60 years of British history and 60 years of the lives of the people they come and go they drift in and out of one

another's experience, lived experience. So I hope we get to do it on here. It's great if you were planning to read it. Well, I just, you know, it's one of the, like Proust, it's one of those things you sort of feel at some point you ought to do. And I've also, i'm fascinated by the period

yeah i'm really interested i'm becoming more and more interested in i think what the the that period that um between the wars and the the i mean i suppose it's that that middle period of the 20th century where it seems that so much of what we're now... The shit that we're now having to clean up sort of happens between the First World War and the Second World War and sort of the post-Second World War. You know, the catastrophic decline of Britain

and the end of empire. And I know Paul just seems to me to be a really interesting... If you want to understand Christine Keeler who died yesterday Also I would add that rather like the Rabbit novels by Updike

although the gap between the first and last volumes is 25 years in terms of when they were written the final volume particularly does that thing that great fiction does of the gap between the first and last volumes is 25 years in terms of when they were written. The final volume particularly does that thing that great fiction does of, up until the very last page, being both unpredictable and completely satisfying.

Which is great. It's inconceivable. In fact, when I was just reading that passage, which I know is quite long, but when I was reading that passage which i know is quite long but when i was reading that passage with the memory of the final few pages in my mind but it's real yeah um spine tingling stuff we'll pick this up again after some adverts stay tuned to this talking about unexpected responses to the first world war i I have to say, I think the book that we're about to talk about

is one of the oddest and most exotic post-war... I mean, you know, there were massive numbers of novels, did it? But Lost Horizon. So the thing about Lost Horizon, before I ask you, Tot, the question that we tend to ask on this programme, I'm going to say a fact about Lost there about lost horizon i'd heard of lost horizon i'd heard of the concept of shangri-la i was surprised to learn that the author of that book had also written another book i'd heard of goodbye mr chips and yet i'm confident that if i went out into the street and said, have you ever heard of James Hilton?

No one would. To have achieved two of the most culturally significant and best-selling books of the 20th century and yet be forgotten. Isn't that odd? It is really odd, isn't it? It seems to me pure backlist. There's three, really, because Random Harvest as well. I read Random Harvest this week. There's three. Lost Horizon by James Hilton.

It's hot. When did you first come across this book? I first came across this book, as usual with me, probably 50% of the books that I've liked I've watched as films or I've always had a sort of mixture of formats. I'm very interested in if something's a film, can it be a book? If it's a book, can it be a musical?

If it's a musical, is it an opera? Or is it a sort of, you know, Stephen Sondheim thing or whatever it is? And so I think I saw, I read the book when I was about nine because it was one of the few books in our school library. And I probably got about halfway through it and I found it very very difficult to um to sort of finish it and actually I read it again two or three weeks ago and I found it difficult

to finish as well it's a ringing endorsement there it was also I also realized um when I was young that it was a sort of thing of wonderment one of the big things about it was literally the title and i love titles i'm a big sort of fan of all kinds of titles and i love when you get two words that take you somewhere so even if i had never seen the book or read the book um lost horizon you know as a kid i don't really know what that means but i know it's a special thing and if you then read the book and you find out what it's actually about the title that comes to you would not be lost horizon it would be something else so it suggests this person's operating on a kind of a higher plane where they're they're really good point it's a really odd title yeah the thinking is like flying above the story and

i like things like because you would call it you know it's essentially the story of sh like things like this because you would call it, you know, it's essentially the story of Shangri-La or Shangri-La but Lost Horizon is it's bigger Conway, who's the key character in the book, it's all about him losing his bearings yeah, that's right before you go any further

based on something you said to me before we recorded, I'm very keen to go around the table I think we have very unusually for Batlister we have a clear split in terms of how we feel about the book so John, did you enjoy the book?

No I did enjoy the book I don't think it is a I don't think it's a massively you know it's not Moby Dick, it's not Moby Dick it's not a great work of literature but I think what I'm curious about

it's very it's a classic high concept book it kind of sets up a story just in terms of narrative I think it tells the story quite well, I think there's a little bit of, you know, fudging towards the

end. Matt, did you enjoy the book? I really enjoyed the book I mean enjoyment is exactly what I felt, I enjoyed it I thought it was a very easy read as well I thought it was by far the worst book the most peculiar book

it's peculiar yeah and Todd what did you say to me you do you think it's a good book i think that um you know this is what i was about to say is that at the same time as i was reading it i used to go to our we will we lived in east anglia in sort of outskirts of cambridge and we had a library and my mother was a reader so i used to have to go and get her a book every week um from the library and i i picked this one, so I used to have to go and get her a book every week from the library, and I picked this one up. And I would have only picked this up because of the cover.

That would have been it, really. But around the same time, I would have seen the black and white film, the Frank Capra film. And I remember when it was at the point when we were watching, like, film matinee and all that stuff, and Fred Astaire films and stuff like that. And this would have really fitted into that. They were black and white, classic Hollywood, like, Goldwyn films. And I remember being entranced by the way that it looked.

The film looks very, very spectacular. And then I remembered that I'd had the book, and that was the book that I'd probably got halfway through and then abandoned. Also, the sort of denouement of the book when they do what they do I don't know how much to say because I want people to read the book because it is a special story

it's a bit of a problem for spoilers yeah there is a devastating scene at the end which I still believe is probably for me, for my brain, is the most devastating scene in movies I really think it is, when I see what happens, when they get to still believe, probably for me, for my brain, is the most devastating scene in movies.

I really think it is. When I see what happens when they get to where they're going, that probably made me levitate on my village sofa. We should add, this is the 1937 Capra film adaptation starring Ronald Coleman, which was in itself a huge hit in its day. Capra's reputation in a way was made largely on the back of Lost Horizon.

He had a number of hits though when you look at the end of it. But like all great things they can happen at any point in history. It doesn't matter really when they happen. And this film is very much a 1930s film.

If you're going to ask me about the book again, Andy, I would say the film is a better work of art than the book. I think the film is better than the book. Yeah. And I think you'd be quite an odd person. But I'm interested

about the book because I wonder if tibetan buddhism if that kind of mystical stuff the shangri-la stuff that's now very familiar post 60s when it became you know i wonder if anybody had i mean you know it's quite it's quite a deep book there's a lot of i mean there's a lot of philosophical complicated stuff in there which for a popular potboiler is quite I mean it's not what you're getting in in most let's I this is a recording of James Hilton this is this is him in 1949 talking about the inspiration of this book was written in 33 right yeah so let's just listen to that now last horizon was written in London 18 years ago during the winter of 1932. That was a hard winter for the world,

the lowest point had we then known it of the Depression, and already dark with the threat of war to come. About that time it probably began to dawn on civilised man that he lived in an age of recurrent and deepening crisis that military victories did not bring peace that his world wars would have to be given numbers and that nowhere on earth was there any place where the storm could be outridden it was in this mood that I wrote lost horizon and I enjoyed writing it as one may sometimes almost consciously enjoy a dream. I once met another traveller from Tibet, a rather odd fellow he was,

and he assured me that he had actually found the last valley of Shangri-La that I wrote about, a haven of peace and beauty hidden amidst the highest peaks in the world, and that it was all pretty much as I had described it. Of course I can hardly believe that but I should like to I should like to Oh that's great

That is lovely. Your point John about what this book said, why some books resonate in the way they do And this was a massive bestseller One of the reasons this was a massive bestseller. A massive bestseller. One of the reasons this was such a bestseller is that it

was you're going to have to cut this Matt. The first pocket book. One of the reasons this was such a bestseller is that it was the first pocket book. The first mass market paperback in the US. In America, 7 million copies. One of the best selling books of the 20th century for that reason.

I've got here the list of the first 10 pocket books, which I thought I would share with you. So, one, Lost Horizon by James Hilton. And remember, these all sold millions of copies because Pockets got the idea from Penguin in the UK. I'm depressed already. Here we go. These all sold millions of copies because Pockets got the idea from Penguin in the UK. I'm depressed already. Here we go. These all sold millions of copies. Lost Horizon. Two, Wake Up and Live by

Dorothea Brand. Three, Five Great Tragedies by William Shakespeare. Four, Topper by Thorne Smith. That's what we should be doing on this show. Topper.

Any Topper fans out there, come on down. Five, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Six, Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker.

Seven, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, which became a bestseller in the US in the 1930s for the most time. Eight, The Way of All Flesh

by Samuel Butler. Wow. Nine, The Bridge of St. Louis Ray by Fulton Wilder. And ten, Bambi by Felix Sultan. Wow. So it has, first of all, it has that tremendous... And the reason, this is another interesting fact, the reason why it became so popular in the mid-1930s is that Hilton, his first hit is actually Goodbye Mr. Chips.

And then on the back of Goodbye Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon becomes a mass bestseller too. So he's clearly telling stories that people in the 30s want to hear. I was thinking as I was reading it that the Llamasry of Shangri-La is a little bit like your kind of fantasy English public school. It's sort of...

Yeah. It's kind of... Enclosed community. Enclosed community, hierarchical, that you're... It's inductive. You don't... You know, Conway, who is kind of the main character he doesn't, the only way you learn stuff is by asking questions and listening

it's not by it's it's a novel that really does, I mean I do think it's a novel that makes you think and reflect it's very deep would you read us an extract from the novel so we can get a feel for it well we haven't really said what it's

actually about yeah do that um perhaps we should do that so so why don't i read from why don't i read from this epic little publication that i bought a long time ago cliff notes you can actually get Lost Horizon Cliffs Notes, no but this is very good and where did that cliff note come from this came from the girls I have to say, Totler's got he's got CDs, he's got amazing

he's got R.D. Lang's knots he's got amazing old editions of the book it's very well prepared and all these incredible LPs which unfortunately we're not going to be able to play these incredible lps which unfortunately i'm going to be able to play because we don't have any i'm going to spin them around on my teeth at the end you don't know that yet but there we are look the english department highland park high school los

angeles california that's where this came from it was probably about 1973 in fact it must be because at the start it says also by james hiltonvest. And it says here we've got a printing. It's a first printing, 1933. And it says, 1973, 17th printing. That's pretty good to get to 17. So have you got the cliff notes? Yeah, I've got the cliff notes. This is what they say.

And just to say that the book's quite different to the film because the book has a lot of unresolved things in it which makes it a little bit difficult to get particularly with this prologue and epilogue in it which the film sort of dispenses with in a way. So here we are. Two men, a novelist and a neurologist sit up all night discussing the fate of a school acquaintance.

This is Hugh Conway, the star of the book, the lead character. The brilliant British consul who mysteriously disappeared the year before, 1930, during an uprising in Afghanistan. A plane carrying him and three other passengers was stolen by an unidentified man and the whole party was never heard of again. was stolen by an unidentified man and the whole party was never heard of again. The author, Rutherford, discloses the startling information that he had found Conway, quite by chance, ill and suffering from amnesia, in a Chinese mission three months before.

While Conway was on his way back to England with Rutherford, his memory returned, and he described his fantastic adventures to Rutherford, who subsequently put them in manuscript form. Conway disappeared from the boat in Honolulu, and his last words sent in a letter to Rutherford three months later from Bangkok stated that he was starting on a long journey to the northwest. Rutherford sets out to look for him. Now, that, weirdly enough, is the Cliff Notes prologue. Now, if I had read that and you'd read the book, you'd kind of go, where is that? What's actually happening? But that is what happens.

But simply, what actually happens is that there is a revolution in Iran, and Hugh Conway is the British consul. And he manages to get a group of people who are frightened out of the way on an airstrip. And they jump into a plane where they don't know where they're going. And Conway kind of goes, get us out of here. And the plane's got a Chinese pilot.

And they go, they don't know where, but they go into the Himalayas and they crash somewhere. This is a, I'm cutting it all down. And in the morning, when they all think, you know, we're going to die, it's very cold and they're in the middle of this kind of mountain, some monks come down from a passage, from a sort of light passage, onto a ledge and they come and they look at the plane and the people in the plane think, oh my God, we're really in trouble here.

And the head monk who is in what we're going to talk about next, John Gilgud. No spoilers. Speaks with a kind of perfect English accent and ask them who they are and if they would like to go with them back to their village. And that's where the story starts. Now, I'm going to read a little bit from the beginning of the book. This is the part that we were talking about that's narrated by Rutherford. Yeah. And this, I think, is actually my favourite scene in the book.

And it is an example of master storytelling. So here we go uh uh a rather odd thing was beginning to happen conway had sat down at the keyboard and was playing some rapid lively piece that i didn't recognize but which drew siva king back in great excitement to ask what it was conway after a long and rather strange silence, could only reply that he didn't know. Siva King exclaimed that that was incredible and grew more excited still. Conway then made what appeared to be a tremendous physical and mental effort to remember and said at last that the thing was a Chopin study. I didn't think myself it could be and I wasn't surprised when Siva King denied it absolutely. Conway, however, grew suddenly quite indignant about the matter,

which startled me, because up to then he had shown so little emotion about anything. My dear fellow, Siva King remonstrated, I know everything of Chopin's that exists, and I can assure you that he never wrote what you have just played. He might well have done so because it's utterly in his style, but he just didn't. I challenge you to show me the score in any of the editions. To which Conway replied at length, oh yes, I remember now. It was never printed. I only know it myself from meeting a man who used to be one of Chopin's pupils. Here's another unpublished thing I learned from him. Rutherford steadied me with his eyes as he went on. I don't know if you're a musician, but even if you're not, I dare say you'll be able to

imagine something of Siva King's excitement of mine too, as Conway continued to play. To me, of course, it was a sudden and quite mystifying glimpse into his past, the first clue of any kind that had escaped. Siva King was naturally engrossed in the musical problem, which was perplexing enough, as you'll realise when I remind you that Chopin died in 1849. I mean, it's wonderful, but it's such a brilliant set-up.

Such a way of showing, not telling. I think this... I found there's a lot in the book that is like that. There's a lot in the book that is like that. There's a lot of quite interesting philosophical digression in it. And there's just a good little passage of great description. That evening after dinner, Conway made occasion to leave the others

and stroll out into the calm, moon-washed courtyards. Shangri-La was lovely then, touched with the mystery that lies at the core of all loveliness. The air was cold and still. The mighty spire of Caracal looked nearer, much nearer than by daylight. Conway was physically happy, emotionally satisfied and mentally at ease but in his intellect, which was not quite the same thing as mind, there was a little stir. He was puzzled. The line of secrecy that he'd begun to map out grew sharper

but only to reveal an inscrutable background. The whole amazing series of events that had happened to him and his three chance companions swung now into a sort of focus. He could not yet understand them, but he believed they were somehow to be understood. And that sort of reflective tone is very much what the book's like. It's a lot of Conway being kind of initiated into the mysteries of this extraordinary place. And without giving too much away,

it's, as Andy said, there is a sort of... There is a kind of a MacGuffin-y type plot to it as well. But I have to say, I'm still not sure what the fuck goes on in the book i was going to say my question to you todd is a straightforward one what is this book about well it's about um it's about wonder it's about aging it's about us being different personalities as we go through our lives i think i reckon we're about six different people when we get from A to B. It's about a single person and the way that he is thought of

by the people in a particular group. It's really about a group story. And I think, I mean, John has alluded to some kind of philosophical, you know, maybe hippie sort of spirit. And I totally agree with that. And I've got some ideas about where it actually comes from because this book does sort of come out of the blue. I mean, you could be reading this in 1970. I was absolutely, when I was a teenager, I loved Lobsang Rampa,

which was, it turns out he was a plumber from Bristol. But those books were all about, I grew up in a Lama Sri in Tibet. And the whole Tibetan Buddhism thing, and Lhasa, and what I feel now is that, what's his name? I can't remember. He's got a great name.

He's called Bill someone. But he was, you know, Tuesday Lobsang Rankin was his and he was the reincarnation of a Tibetan Lama but I obviously think he read Lost Horizon at an early age and I mean it's quite interesting because you do have

to keep reminding yourself that this book was written in 1933 it was as Hilton himself said, it was at the sort of the bottoming out of the Depression. It was before the Second World War. It was before Hiroshima. And way before Tibetan Buddhism became a kind of a... I mean, I guess there were elements of it in there.

Aldous Huxley was interested in it. But it certainly wasn't mainstream. Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. There are... No, I think what you're saying, John, and Todd as well, is for me what the book is about is, let's say you find a utopia. Is it possible to sustain a utopia?

The idea, or is it something that you have to look for and leave somebody in the 1930s who had been through the first world war with an eye on what might happen in the future seems to me and without giving away the differences between the book and the film which we're all a bit kind of is the book is very much

less clear about what happens it's unresolved in the book in a way. Can I just pick up on what you said originally? Because I think that's the key thing. So I think that the influence in this book could very well be, so it was written in London. It wasn't written in America. He hadn't gone there yet.

And I think that it comes from, number one, possibly William Morris, News From Nowhere. News From Nowhere. Yeah. That's exactly what it reminded me of. Because if you think about hippie communities... Which is not a very good book, in my view. I mean, much as I love, I adore Morris.

But it is the kind of first one of its type. If you think about hippie communities, you know, William Morris is like the first thing, really. And that's 1892. It says here, I just looked at it this morning to have a look at it, it says no one unburdened with very heavy anxieties could have felt otherwise than happy that morning. And it must be said that whatever anxieties might lie beneath the surface of things,

we didn't seem to come across any of them. Now, one of the ideas about Shangri-La is that you can actually stay much younger than you are as long as you don't have anxieties. And that's why they have the tanghazi berry or whatever it's called. That's the right, the magic berry. Yeah, narcotic berry. And the idea is to... There is a slight magic bush thing about it.

A mighty bush thing about it as well, isn't it? It's like, open the door. But the thing is, what's so interesting about it is that it's so embedded in the culture of the whole 20th century the notion of Shangri-La now we have another clip here which I was so happy when I

found this so Hilton is writing about utopia but here he is talking about another writer in another book who, which portrays the opposite, portrays dystopia. George Orwell is a distinguished English writer who is desperately concerned, as many others of us are today, with the shape of things to come.

And as long ago as 1932, Mr. Huxley satirized the regimented state in his book called Brave New World. Indeed, the crisis of our civilization is in some danger of becoming a cliché for after-dinner speakers. Personally, I find Mr. Orwell's picture horrible and timely and fascinating. It will probably take its place among the memorable works of its kind, both for its technical virtuosity and for a sort of intellectual passion that pervades it throughout. Mr. Orwell is, as we say, burned up about the state of the world, but the fuel of that fire is not only in the world, but in his own mind.

This is what makes the satirist at all times and in all ages, and it's why, having read Mr Orwell's 1984, you may not feel you'd like to meet any of its characters, but you do feel you'd like to meet Mr. Orwell if only for an argument. 1949. 1949. That's incredible. So Hilton was born in 1900 and he wrote 20

novels. 1920 novels. It has his first success in the early 1930s, and then he moves to Hollywood, and he works in Hollywood, as many writers did in that time. He won an Oscar for his contributions to the script of Mrs Miniver. He contributes to Foreign Correspondent by Alfred Hitchcock.

And then he sort of becomes, towards the end of his life, what you're hearing then is he used to regularly broadcast on books for NBC. So those clips come from him as a kind of Hollywood personality writer. One of his great public admirers was Sigmund Freud, although Freud thought that he had been too prolific. Perhaps. The curse of the middle ground. Yeah.

But he wrote a book. I'd love to read this. A book of his I was... This description sounds amazing. This is from the late... This is from the 40s, I think. He wrote a novel called We Are Not Alone. And I'm quoting from the description here.

A grim story of a legally approved lynching brought on by wartime hysteria He wrote a novel called We Are Not Alone. And I'm quoting from the description here. A grim story of a legally approved lynching brought on by wartime hysteria in Britain. Wow. Now that sounds like... That does sound great. That sounds great, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, he's a master storyteller. He's a good storyteller, you have to say.

I think Lost Horizon is... I mean, it's fascinating because it obviously it I mean you know put pocketbooks aside it touched a nerve I mean you don't sell I mean it

even in the 70s it sold 3 million copies by the 70s God knows what it sold yeah but it's proper a proper sort of

blockbuster so what could possibly go wrong and a great film okay so what could possibly go wrong so Todd and I

were talking about this. So Hilton has this incredible weird thing that happens twice to him. He's got a hugely successful book, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon. It becomes a great black and white film, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon. Robert, don't ask. Then becomes a terrible musical, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon. So Goodbye Mr. Chips is made into a musical in the late 1960s with songs by Leslie Bricus, starring Peter O'Toole.

The worst bits of casting of all time. Of course I remember. Now I do remember. But this is what... Tot, tell us something about the musical adaptation of Lost Horizon. Okay, I really like it. I don't think it's bad or silly or anything. As a film, it's a bit strange, I guess.

When it came out in 1973, I actually went to see it three times that week with my friend Mick Bass, who's a songwriter as well. And we went to see it just to hear the songs come up. Because in my view, this is actually Baccarat and Hal David. And it's them at the height of their powers. You think this is Baccarat and David at their absolute peak? Absolutely.

I had never heard this soundtrack until about ten days ago. I've now listened to the soundtrack several times and I've seen the film. And I have to say, the soundtrack is magnificent, I've seen the film and I have to say the soundtrack is magnificent I think so thank you Tot for making it I bought the record years ago but because of its reputation I'd never actually played it and you really

rate it don't you? I think it's very beautiful and I think it's very interesting as well there is some synchronicity with this hippie thing and of course we are now in the hippie era and so Lost Horizon is very appropriate but also um Backrack David had had at least uh seven eight years of being like the top top team maybe apart from Leonard McCartney and I think that they wanted to move somewhere else they wanted to move into another area and this sort of oriental slightly kind of

Chinese thing that that bit that you played there's not very representative that's more else who wanted to move into another area and this sort of oriental slightly kind of chinese thing that that bit that you played there's not very representative that's more but it sounds yes but it sounds like a backrack it does sound like a backrack it's got the latin flavor also at the time if you think about what was actually happening you know 70 71 72 73 we were talking about it before but steven sondheim you know, it's the height of sophistication of songwriting and putting that together with a story, and I believe that this is as well, you have Jimmy Webb, you know

you have this thing where Surf's Up, you know, you have things where pop music is at its most sophisticated level, it's very very chromatic, it's modulating all the time, you know, you get like a line with four, you're in four keys in a Jimmy Webb song, for example.

Surf's up, it's difficult to figure out where you actually are. And there's a song here called The World is a Circle, where I counted it in nine seconds, we're in four different keys. The thing about The World is a Circle is a top pointed out to me, to my utter rapture, that The World is a Circle sounds

remarkably like a highly orchestrated version of our usual backlisted theme music so what you heard at the beginning of this episode I hope is a little bit of the extract from the world is a circle

which just sounds like our music but wonderfully orchestrated so the score is uh is amazing amazing but there are big problems with the film i've seen the film now listen i'm gonna play we're gonna play a bit from a song this is a key song in the in the musical adaptation called if i could go back where conway the character con Conway played by Peter Finch, the immediately the red light starts flashing, what could go wrong?

But Conway played by Peter Finch. He's got to be way too old. I mean, he's way too old. He's thinking to himself, if I could go back to civilization from Shangri-La, would I go back? Now here is this. I also, in preparation for this episode, I read, although I had a copy for several years,

I read Bert Bacharach's autobiography. It was wonderful. What the least gallant book ever written. That's not the bit I'm going to. So I'm going to read you this. This is from the chapter about Lost Horizon. And this is what he talks about, that song that we've just listened to. I won't do Bert's voice because it's not there.

Although I still think a lot of the music I did for Lost Horizon was good, there was one scene in the picture where Peter Finch, who played the leader of the Travellers, has to make a big decision. He misses his life in London, but if he stays in Shangri-La, he can be with the woman he loves forever. So he sings, If I Could Go Back. The song had a lot of heart and I thought it was very powerful when I saw the song in the rushes I thought it was good but after I watched a rough cut of the entire film for the first time I knew

it was a disaster it didn't matter that Peter Finch was singing how do I know this is part of my real life if there's no pain can I be sure that i feel life and would i go back if i knew how to go back because when you saw it in the movie you didn't give a fuck if he went back on so this film is is a you know which was known as in the hollywood community as lost investment yeah it destroyed top tell us about what happened to Bacharach after this film. Well, you know, the partnership between Bacharach and Hal David split up. Bacharach sort of doesn't do much for a long time. Well, he goes and makes these couple of records that I bought,

including... He makes a version of... I mean, he didn't... It's not that he didn't like the songs from Lost Horizon because he goes off and makes an album of them himself. There it is, living together. And that's actually very, very beautiful, even if the film didn't exist. And then this one, Futures, which is, again, another advance.

That's 1977. So he's still kind of active, but I think they definitely kind of lost the gist of it. But actually, in truth, if you look at the history of Bacharach and David, they'd lost the gist of it. But actually, in truth, if you look at the history of Bacharach and David, they'd lost the gist about a couple of years before. They'd had some wonderful singles

with Dionne Warwick that didn't actually make it and that must have been desperately disappointing after that very long run. All great songwriting runs come to an end. They just do. I'd love you to do another, if you've got anything else to read from the book. Yeah, read us something from the book, Tom.

What I feel is that this is a classic example another, if you've got anything else to read from the book. Yeah, read us something from the book, Tom. Because, I mean, what I feel is that it's, this is a classic example of a narrative that's sort of, if it hadn't existed, somebody would have had to have invented it. It's, I read it

with a sense of familiarity, which was quite odd. I mean, you know, I've never read it before, never really thought about James Hilton as a writer odd. I mean, you know, I've never read it before, never really thought about James Hilton as a writer before. I mean, it's not massively similar to Mr Chips, but there are sort of themes there. And I think, I don't know, I sort of think the whole idea of a... I mean, there's a brilliant passage where he predicts the Second World War

and says, you know, there's a major... As you heard from that clip of him talking, the world war's being numbered. There is a sense, I can see, that it has that slightly creepy quality that people think, yes, maybe there is this idea of living in a place where... There's a couple of things I've marked out where time,

you've got time to do and to learn and to expand and this marvellous kind of, and the whole idea of Shangri-La. I mean, as far as I can see, this is where the whole Shangri-La, which is now hotels and everywhere you go in the world, there are Shangri-Las. This is the Fons et Origo of the concept. Blinkered but erudite. This is the Fons et Origo of Shangri-La.

I mean, this is where Shangri-La comes from. And you look on the internet, there's Shangri-Las everywhere. Camp David, which is the president of the United States country house, was originally called Shangri-La because of this. That's a good fact. A big, chunky bit of 20th century popular culture. Please read us something to take us out. Read us out.

So when Conway arrives at Shangri-La, we learn how Shangri-La came to be, and it was because a Capuchin monk went there. We find out later on that was a couple of hundred years ago, which is kind of an odd thing. And he was Father Perrault, and he'd been ill, and he went there to get healed etc and this is a little bit uh just one paragraph really but it's it just sort of typifies the the style of writing and some information about Father Perrault who is then the sort of grandmaster that Conway then goes to see towards the end of the book to kind of get information about what happens and again it's very difficult to tell people the story

because the story advances every couple of pages. It's going to spoil it. Now, let me tell you about this man. His name was Perrault, and he was by birth a Luxembourger, it says. Before devoting himself to Far Eastern missions, he'd studied at Paris and other universities. He was something of a scholar. There are few existing records of his early life, but it was not in any way unusual for one of his age and profession. He was fond of music and the arts. He had a special aptitude for languages,

and before he was sure of his vocation, he had tasted all the familiar pleasures of the world. So the idea being that you can actually be very fulfilled and still quite unhappy and needing something else. So it's got this emptiness at the centre of it. There's one little tiny bit which I thought was quite nice. It's Conway. And they link with the First World War, which I like. There came a time, he realised,

when the strangeness of everything made it increasingly difficult to realise the strangeness of anything. When one took things for granted merely because astonishment would have been as tedious for oneself as for others. Thus far had he progressed at Shangri-La, and he had remembered that he'd attained a similar,

though far less pleasant, equanimity during his years at the war. Which I think is kind of... The whole point about the book is that Conway, who gets fitted up to become this mystic in the book, is sort of fitted up because he's been through the horror of the First World War. And that whole sense, which is a big cliche now, detachment, which, you know, the idea is, you know,

laziness in doing stupid things can be a great virtue, is one of the lines I love. But this idea that you don't you don't attach yourself Conway drives everybody mad by saying hey it's alright I'm kind of here I'm quite enjoying myself but it becomes a sort of philosophical virtue by the end

of the book I think it's like I say I don't think it is a towering masterpiece of a novel but I think it's fascinating that it was as successful as it was. But it has that thing. It's one of the great gifts of fiction that I read it, I thought, what peculiar book.

Look at the problems there. What are that lumpy bit? Can I get it out of my head? Of course I can. As you know, it really resonates. So, Tot, thank you. Thank you for giving us also, giving me the excuse to spend literally weeks

listening to Bacharach music, of course. And there's nothing better than... I mean, I remember you said it, there's nothing better than Bacharach and David when they're on. No, no, no. Ensemble. Yeah.

Oh, that seems as good a point as any. I wish to stop. Thanks to Tot Taylor, to our producer, producer Matt Hall and thanks again to our sponsors Unbound, you can get in touch with us on Twitter at BacklistedPod or on Facebook, Facebook obviously it's BacklistedPod and now on our lovely

beautiful new page on the Unbound website, Unboundless Unbound's new and very delightful online magazine, unbound.com forward slash boundless forward slash backlisted. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with another

show in a fortnight. You can choose to listen to Backlisted with or without adverts. If you prefer to listen to it without adverts, you can join us on our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash backlisted where you also get bonus content of two episodes of lock listed the podcast where we talk about the books and films and music that we've been listening to over the last couple of weeks you can