James Hilton, best-selling novelist, screen-writer, journalist, and short-story writer, was born at Leigh, Lancashire, England, on 9 September 1900. His father, John Hilton, was a schoolmaster as was his wife before their marriage, and in 1902 the family moved to London where John Hilton became headmaster of an elementary school. After grammar school, James Hilton entered Leys School, a public school in Cambridge where he encountered the Chipsian "world of the ablative absolute and toasted crumpets for tea, of Greek verses and cricket." At Leys he dabbled in "pacifist and revolutionary poetry" and served as editor of the school magazine. He continued his education at Christ's College, Cambridge.

Hilton's professional writing career began during his undergraduate years at Cambridge. At seventeen, he had published an article in the Manchester Guardian and had begun his first novel, Catherine Herself, which was published with little reaction in 1920. He graduated in 1921, receiving a B...