Goodbye MR Chips

’A tiny, catch-in-the-throat story . . . perfectly done’ New Yorker
’One of the most endearing creations of modern fiction’ Telegraph

Mr Chipping is a quiet, unassuming teacher at Brookfield Grammar School. Wholly conventional, he never veers from his established routines. Until, that is, he meets Katherine, who charms him and his students and teaches Mr Chipping that education is about more than just the hours spent in the schoolroom. As his love for Katherine blooms, Mr Chipping develops a sense of humour and a broad view of his role as a teacher and a friend to his students, becoming the beloved ’Mr Chips’ to generations of schoolboys.

Sweeping across four decades, Goodbye, Mr Chips features an extraordinary period of history, from the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s to Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, and demonstrates that, through it all, love and a good sense of humour can make all the difference.

Goodbye, Mr Chips is the beloved classic of generations of readers, and sure to delight people of all ages.

James Hilton was born in 1900. He wrote his first novel, Catherine Herself, at the age of twenty while still an undergraduate. For several years he worked as a freelance journalist and book reviewer. And Now Goodbye, published 1931, heralded the success that was to come to him; it was followed in 1933 by Knight Without Armour and Lost Horizon (awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1934). Goodbye, Mr. Chips appeared in 1934; in 1938 came the stage version, and in 1939 the film. He was invited to go to Hollywood, where he became one of the most popular scenario writers. Random Harvest was published in 1941, and he continued writing until the year before his death, in December 1954, his last book being Time and Time Again. Another major feature film was made in 1969 starring Peter O’Toole.