Shangri-La (musical) Shangri-La (musical) Shangri-La is a musical with a book and lyrics by James Hilton, Jerome Lawrence, and Robert E. Lee and music by Harry Warren. Based on Hilton's classic 1933 novel "Lost Horizon", it focuses on Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the British diplomatic service, who stumbles across a utopian lamasery high in the Himalayas in Tibet after surviving a plane crash in the mountainous terrain. When the dying High Lama asks him to take charge after his death, Conway must decide between embracing the inner peace, love, and sense of purpose he has discovered in this mysterious world
James Hilton (novelist) a darker side. Flaws in the English society of his time – particularly narrow-mindedness and class-consciousness – were frequently his targets. His novel "We Are Not Alone", despite its inspirational-sounding title, is a grim story of legally approved lynching brought on by wartime hysteria in Britain. Freud – an early admirer (though he considered "The Meadows of the Moon" below par) – came to conclude that Hilton had wasted his talent by being too prolific. First published in 1933, this novel won Hilton the Hawthornden Prize in 1934. Later, Pocket Books, which pioneered the publication of small, soft-cover, inexpensive books,