Goodbye (again) Mr Chips

AS actor Martin Clunes steps into the shoes of the crusty but loveable schoolmaster Mr Chipping on Boxing Day, he will be following in the footsteps of a local head teacher.

James Hilton, the author who created the character in Goodbye Mr Chips, partly modelled him on his own father John, who was head teacher of Chapel End School, Walthamstow.

A blue plaque on a house in Oak Hill Gardens, Woodford Green, marks the place where he wrote the novel and his other blockbuster, Lost Horizon, concerning the mythical kingdom of Shangri-La.

James was born in 1900 in Leigh, Lancashire, his parents' home town.

Within months, John, the boy's mother Elizabeth, also a teacher, and their baby son moved to 25 Brookscroft Road, Walthamstow, to start a new life.

In 1905, they moved again, to 16 College Road, Walthamstow, and James began his formal education, which eventually took him to the local Sir George Monoux Grammar School. It was there he met Mr Topliss, the man who taught him Latin, English and history, and contributed a strand to the eventual portrayal of Mr Chips.

When James was 15, John Hilton decided that his only child should have the opportunity to attend a public school and un-usually for the time gave him the chance to choose where he would like to go.

The boy selected the famous Leys School in Cambridge where the third strand in the Chipping character was developed through acquaintance with another teacher, William Balgarnie.

After a glowing performance at Christ's College, Cambridge, 21-year-old James rejoined his parents in the house they had just moved to in Oak Hill Gardens.

There was a long, hard slog ahead for the brilliant and ambitious young man.

His real desire was to write successful novels and he had minor triumphs early on with Catherine Herself, Storm Passage and Now Goodbye.

But he had to supplement his income by writing newspaper articles for more than a decade while he searched for the idea that would make his name.

Typing away in his back garden, he finally hit on the theme that was to catapult him to fame the notion of a hidden Himalayan valley where the quality of life was perfect, until a traveller stumbled into it. Shangri-La, the location of Lost Horizon, has worked its way into the English language as another name for utopia.

The novel won James the prestigious Hawthorne Prize in 1933 and plaudits on both sides of the Atlantic.

The following year, Goodbye Mr Chips cemented his reputation.

Amazingly, he wrote it in just four days for the 1933 Christmas edition of the British Weekly. It was printed as a novel the following year.

By this time, James had moved to Ingoldsby, another house in Woodford Green. It has since been renamed James Hilton House.

But he was soon to leave his home country behind for ever.

Hollywood had "discovered" his books and he was invited there to produce screenplays. The popular actor Robert Donat became the first screen Mr Chips in 1939. Peter O'Toole was the second, in 1969.

By then, the author's parents were with him in the US. They were visiting him when war broke out and had to remain.

Elizabeth Hilton died in the US but John returned to Oak Hill Gardens in 1947 and remained there until his death in 1955.

Sadly, he outlived his son.

Having gained further fame as one of Hollywood's highest paid screenwriters and won an Oscar for his work on the wartime weepie Mrs Miniver, James died suddenly in Long Beach, California, in 1954.

It was 1997 before English Heritage decided to accord him the honour of a blue plaque on one of his London homes.

Oak Hill Gardens was chosen because it was there he wrote his two greatest novels.

At the unveiling, Francis Carnwarth, chairman of the blue plaque committee, recalled a former master at his Cambridge college who said he only ever went to two films Kind Hearts and Coronets to laugh with, and Goodbye Mr Chips to cry.

Now many fans will be waiting to see what Martin Clunes better known for his comic roles will make of Chips, his strict disciplinary ways, his touching romance and marriage that softened his character, his heartbreak after his young wife's death and his long devotion to the boys of Brookfield School.

15:08 Thursday 12th December 2002

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