Category: British and Irish Literature

Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day – A Review

My friend James almost always brings up The Remains of the Day when we talk about literature. He’s a huge fan of Kazuo Ishiguro and rather thought the book would be my cup of tea. Well, at long last I’ve read the book and I have to admit that he was right. The Remains of the Day is a fascinating and sad story about the passage of time, and what we can salvage from the end of our lives, when it might seem that so much has passed us by. At my advanced age of twenty-two, it seems perfectly suited for me.

A photo of Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017
Kazuo Ishiguro is among the most celebrated authors writing in the UK now, and The Remains of the Day is probably his most famous work. He won the Nobel Prize in 2017. Photo by Frankie Fouganthin (CC BY-SA 4.0)

It tells the story of the life of a butler, Mr Stevens, who works in a great English country house, Darlington Hall, and the challenges he faces when he comes to look back on his past in his twilight years. For me the book is particularly poignant because of my own experience of the topics dealt within it, as my grandmother lives in a castle that is still served by staff (though they don’t live on site). Although it was published in 1989 and the action takes place in 1956, the questions and concerns of The Remains of the Day all remain vital and interesting now, and stretch far beyond the secret world of British upper classes it takes as its setting.

The Story

Mr Stevens, the aging butler of Darlington Hall, is presented with his greatest challenge yet when his new American employer suggests he goes for a car ride to get himself out of the house. The American is returning for a few weeks to his homeland and thinks that Stevens could use the fresh air. Stevens himself is not altogether for the idea, but he manages to convince himself. He has begun to notice certain mistakes in the running of the household, which he attributes to a lack of staff employed since Lord Darlington, the original owner, left. The trip can therefore be justified as a business one, for Stevens has recently received a letter from a former housekeeper, Miss Kenton, and he decides to end his trip with a visit to her home, hoping she will rejoin the household.

Though Stevens travels around the countryside, most of The Remains of the Day comes as memories Stevens reconsiders with age. The central tension in Remains of the Day becomes the one between what Stevens is willing to admit to himself, and what out of fear, or cowardice, or pride, he does not accept. The decline and death of his own father, the rise of fascism, and Stevens’ relations with Miss Kenton and Lord Darlington are all replayed to the reader, but only by looking at what is not said can we appreciate their significance.

The Style and Form of The Remains of the Day

The first-person narration of The Remains of the Day is deceptively simple. It certainly is deceptive. Stevens has been plucked perfectly from his upper-class milieu, and like the English upper-class, he rarely says what he means. It is only thanks to the vividness of his memories, in particular through remembered dialogue, that we come to see what is really going on in the past and in the present. To take one example, when Stevens finds that his father has died, he decides to continue working at an important international conference instead of taking a break. In the narration there is no hint that Stevens is suffering. The recollection is explained by Stevens as the apotheosis of his career as a butler, his ultimate mastery of dignity. But then we reach the dialogue of his waiting, and his desired impression comes under attack.

“Stevens, are you all right?”

“Yes, sir. Perfectly.”

“You look as though you’re crying.” I laughed and taking out a handkerchief, quickly wiped my face.

“I’m very sorry, sir. The strains of a hard day.”

Without narration to interrupt and reinterpret this exchange, we are presented with a direct glimpse of Stevens’ pain. But when the chapter ends he tries once more to control our interpretation of the recollection. “For all its sad associations, whenever I recall that evening today, I find I do so with a large sense of triumph.” Language is a tool for the expression of our selves, for communication. But it can just as easily be used for creating a false picture of the world. Stevens, as if to save himself from the truth of that day, from the rejection of his father on his death bed, uses language to justify his cold-heartedness, to turn defeat into a kind of triumph. “You see, I know my father would have wishes me to carry on just now.” He says. But we aren’t so easily fooled.

Love and Deceit

The language of The Remains of the Day, instead of revealing, conceals the true nature of what has passed. Through verbiage and excessive reasoning Stevens tries to fool himself and the reader. Miss Kenton and her attempts to flirt with Stevens are concealed in the narration by Stevens’ refusal to ascribe any kind of romantic meaning to them. They appear only as words, and we need to divine their hidden depths for ourselves. Likewise, Stevens structures his trip to Miss Kenton – he initially “forgets” that she’s married and now Mrs Benn – as a business trip. But to the reader it’s clear enough that there is a romantic interest involved too.

We would be forgiven for thinking that Stevens does not realise what he is doing, that he is deceiving himself. The truth is much more sad. As the book draws to a close we find Stevens, at the end of the day, sitting by the beach. As he talks with a stranger it becomes clear that he knows that his life has been filled with mistakes, and that he’s trying desperately to find something good in all of them. The ending at least gives us a glimmer of hope, that though Stevens is old, still he might yet change, and find joy in what remains to him, and what has passed him by.

A photo of an English country house, located in front of a pond
An English country house, of the sort that Mr Stevens spends his life in. But is there something missing in that world and that life? photo by Ronald Searle (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Great Butler and the Stiff Upper Lip

We English tend not to talk about our feelings, not even among friends. Stevens, one can tell, has never confided a thing to anybody. But though he has survived, The Remains of the Day raises the question of how far our English taciturnity is cause for celebration. Stevens is preoccupied with the question of “what is a great butler”, a question he explores with almost academic rigour. A large part of it is the stiff upper lip, what Stevens terms dignity. It is the decision never to let one’s feelings either show or affect one’s work. Stevens, in his own description of himself, asks the reader to consider whether he himself might be such a butler. For anybody who has been reading, his loyalty to Lord Darlington and his dignity in the face of his father’s death, are all compelling evidence of his “greatness”.

But Stevens never asks us at what cost this greatness has been attained. The Remains of the Day doesn’t just undermine Stevens’ narrative, it also challenges the very values he holds dear. What we see, even if he doesn’t, is that being a great butler attacks Stevens’ own humanity. The coldness, the dedication to one’s craft that Stevens practices, dehumanises him. He is unable to “banter”, to engage in the world and form non-professional relationships with other people. He suffers especially harshly at the hands of his new American employer, Mr Farraday, for whom bantering is second nature.

But Stevens also doesn’t appreciate beauty either. Although he claims to live in one of the most magical places in England, he rarely shows it. Whether the portraits on the wall or silver on the table, the beauty in objects simply becomes part of Stevens’ job – he must keep things clean and shiny. It is only extremely infrequently, and often in the company of Miss Kenton, that Stevens’ narration is forced, for a moment, to acknowledge the beauty of the sun setting or the grounds of the manor house. Stevens is a great butler, but for all that he’s lost his friends, he’s failed to find love, and he cannot even appreciate the beauty that lies in front of him. Truth be told, the cost of his excellence seems far too high.

The Glory of the Past

The common note in The Remains of the Day, even before Stevens’ personal failures are explored, is melancholy and decline. It is the gentle melancholy of Chekhov, seeing the world fall apart but not wishing to intervene. In Ishiguro’s novel this decline is primarily a decline of the worldview and corresponding world of the British upper class. We see this immediately at the novel’s beginning. Stevens has remained in the employ of the owners of Darlington Hall, but the Darlingtons are nowhere to be seen. Instead, an outsider – and American – has arrived, and most of the original staff have left. Americans in The Remains of the Day represent the future. Lord Darlington, dismayed by the cruel treatment of Germany with the Treaty of Versailles, hopes to change the treaty’s contents.

To this end, Darlington eventually organises a conference with major figures from all across Europe. The goal is to pressure their respective governments to ease the reparations demanded of Germany. It is a noble goal, motivated by honour and respect for the First World War’s defeated countries. However, it is a goal from a bygone age. An American in attendance stands and gives a speech where he attacks all of the Europeans for their foolish idealism, for their useless values and amateurism. What they need to succeed is cunning and professionalism. He is booed out of the conference. But Hitler succeeds precisely because he knew how to manipulate this idealism, how to appeal to the values of the British classes when encouraging appeasement. In the end, of course, the American is proved right.

The glorious past that Stevens loves is revealed, over the course of The Remains of the Day, to be ultimately an illusion. Darlington, with his conference a failure, dabbles in fascism and dies a disgrace. Antisemitism leads to the unfair dismissal of two maids, and Stevens – ever the professional – refuses even to comfort them as he removes them from their positions. Stevens is also a terrible elitist and snob without ever, really, justifying these views. As easy as it is to begin The Remains of the Day with a sense of nostalgia, it’s equally hard not to end the book with a feeling of disappointment in the world that lies behind us. Of course, there was a lot to value in some of the old British values – but there was far more that really isn’t worth our time.

Conclusion

It was interesting as I read The Remains of the Day to see how my attitude to Stevens himself changed. At first I thought of him as something of a buffoon. But then as time went on that bemusement morphed into sadness, disappointment, and finally a kind of anger. I was angry that Stevens was so obsessed about being a great butler that he came to neglect everything else in the world. I was angry that he spends the entire book lying to himself. It’s only at the very end that there’s a brief hint that all that might change. But I was glad of it, just as I was glad for Stevens. In truth, I pitied him.

the original cover of The Remains of the Day, showing a pocket watch on a black background
The book’s original cover.

The Remains of the Day is a lovely book. Its story of decline hidden under the façade of class glory rings true with my own experience of the declining position of old elites. It is wonderfully written – it is not beautiful, but it is the perfect blend of form and content. Stevens feels incredibly real, and his self-delusion seems strikingly real too. There are many of us who go through life trying to tell ourselves that our own course is the right one. But sooner or later the time comes when we must face the truth of our error. Even if we are already in the remains of our own days upon this earth, there is still great value in taking the step towards self-knowledge. In that sense, for all its melancholy, the message of The Remains of the Day remains an uplifting one. Check it out.

For more delicate treatment of the past, consider Salvatore Satta’s tale of the coming of modernity in Sardinia, The Day of Judgement, reviewed here; and also Svetlana Alexievich’s Second-hand Time, presenting in an interview format the collapse of the Soviet Union from those who experienced it, reviewed here.

Myth and the Creation of Character in Conrad’s Nostromo

I’ve just finished Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, a magnificent and great novel if ever there was one. It chronicles several years in the history of the invented Republic of Costaguana in South America, focusing on the seaboard town known as Sulaco as it grows rich and influential thanks to a huge silver mine located there. This mine is the central image of the story, consuming the hearts and minds of every character by offering power and wealth in equal measure and giving the novel many elements taken from traditional myths. What Nostromo does so well is use this mine to become at turns a political novel, a philosophical one, and – most importantly – an adventure one. Using formal inventiveness Conrad is able to create a fictional world every bit as alluring as the silver at its heart.

A photo of Joseph Conrad, author of Nostromo
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), whose Heart of Darkness has been the bane of many schoolchildren, including me. I’m glad I gave him a second chance, because he has fast become one of my favourites.

Here, though, I’d like to gush simply about the formal tricks and turns Conrad uses to introduce and give life to his imagined republic, and to the characters who inhabit it, especially the mysterious and fascinating Nostromo himself. The novel is good enough that I could go on for days, and so I think it’s wise I limit myself to these two connected ideas.

An Introduction to Sulaco: The First Chapter of Nostromo

The first chapter of Nostromo is not, dare I say, particularly punchy. It begins in the matter of fact manner more typical of a history book than of a novel. But therein lies its purpose. It is designed to bring us into the Republic of Costaguana and Sulaco as if they had existed for many years. And this requires a great deal of skill. When we think of a country, we rarely stop there in our minds. We think of the capital, we think of the location, we think of its history and its people. Conrad, in creating a new world, has to do all this in a way that doesn’t come across as being boring; but he also cannot skimp on the descriptions, because then the world will hardly feel real and lived-in then. That is the central challenge for the first chapter and its four or five pages.

“In the time of Spanish rule” – the novel’s opening words – already establish Nostromo as part of history, and a familiar one. We laypeople may not know the specifics of Spanish rule, but we know its approximate time and its approximate extent. It doesn’t seem too unreasonable to add another country to those we know Spain once ruled.

Once the country has been fixed in history it needs to be fixed geographically through a description of the main features around Sulaco itself. But naming a mere rock, such like the peninsula of Azuera, is once again not enough. Conrad must invest objects with history too, and show their relationship to the people. And thus, the barren peninsula, we are told, is associated by the poor of the town with “an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth” and therefore they “will tell you that it is deadly because of its hidden treasures”. Now we have not merely a rock, but a people revealed through their attitude towards it.

Conrad goes on, very briefly, to tell the story of this peninsula – which is never visited during the events of Nostromo. That is, how two foreigners went out with the goal of finding the treasure apparently lurking there but disappeared without a trace. Again, we have the people’s view of things – “the two gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to be dwelling to this day amongst the rocks, under the fatal spell of their success”. Magic and mystery live within the language of this part of the novel, and these stories-within-the-story of Nostromo add to the fairy-tale like quality of the novel. Ideas and events seem doomed to repeat. Perhaps, indeed, they are fated to.

A photo of Panama, showing trees and a peninsula
A view of Panama, whose scenery is similar to that of the Republic of Costaguana in Nostromo. Picture from Erandly [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

The rest of the first chapter continues to add to this mythic representation of Sulaco and its history. A rogue cloud is described as “burst[ing] suddenly into flame and crash[ing] like a sinister pirate-ship of the air” – an ominous description if ever there was one. Meanwhile, using phrases like “as the saying is”, Conrad is able to create even the idiomatic language itself of the local populace. There is no weak point, it seems to me, in all of this – the world feels real and lived-in. The attitude of the locals is built up piecemeal through each new geographical location and its associations, so that by the end of the chapter, without a single man or woman being named, the reader has the sense of a them as pious folk, superstitious and hostile towards foreigners and their wealth. We already know their speech; we even know their myths.

And as Nostromo progresses we return to these places in thought or in action, and even the figures of speech find themselves being used. The novel itself is the vindication of its first chapter, proving the reality of all that Conrad initially describes. The two parts buttress and justify each other.

An Invaluable Fellow – The Creation of Nostromo the Man

The best of Conrad’s characters embody the fragility of our understanding that came with modernism and the modern sensibility – people like Lord Jim and Kurtz, characters seen through Marlow’s eyes in glimpses, as though they are walking deep in fog. Nostromo creates its titular character in a way that takes its cue from Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim while moving beyond them. Nostromo himself, oddly enough, scarcely appears in the novel’s first two hundred pages, but we feel his presence throughout. While other characters, such as the stoic Charles Gould, owner of Sulaco’s San Tomé mine, are all focused on the creation of wealth, Nostromo himself stands out by his focus, instead, on his reputation. And in light of this, the lack of his appearance until the middle of the novel makes perfect sense – his reputation precedes him. We come to “know” him before we meet him.

But at the same time, we feel a sense of uncertainty in our knowledge of Nostromo. We come to know the facts – he is an Italian, raised in Genoa, who now is the captain of the longshoremen in Sulaco’s harbour – long before we meet the man, but we are keenly aware that they are inadequate for getting a true measure of him. When we do see Nostromo he appears in the epic mode, rather than as a normal character – his language is curt and full of an almost inhuman confidence. When he talks with one character who is mourning the fact that his son never lived past childhood Nostromo simply says “If he had been like me he would have been a man.”

His figure is also highly symbolic. For example, there is the silver-grey mare that he rides, which connects him with the mine while also making him preternaturally fast. He appears like a vengeful spirit without clear goals of his own – he lacks any kind of internality, at least in the novel’s first hundred pages or so, where his confidence and pride overcome any hint of reflexivity. At the closing moments of Part First he is present at a night-time celebration among the locals which even has more than a hint of the Dionysian about it, with “the barbarous and imposing noise of the big drum” that draws him in. There, he is confronted by a lover who demands a gift, and Nostromo, carelessly powerful, cuts off the silver buttons of his very own coat to give to her. His self-mastery is frightening and alluring.

A picture of the Panama Canal being built. Exploitation of resources doesn't come without exploitation of the people too. Conrad nudges us at times to ask if it is worth it.
The Panama Canal under construction. During Nostromo we see the Republic of Costaguana become highly developed due to its silver mine and European and American investment. But Conrad is keen to show that all of this change is not without its cost. He nudges us to consider the human consequences of all this “progress”.

The use of names is another area where Nostromo casts an epic shadow. By giving him countless names and epithets Conrad shows the multifaceted nature of his character. Even the very name “Nostromo” is not his own, but the name by which the English residents of Sulaco call him. We don’t even hear his actual name, Giovanni Fidenza, until near the book’s end. As a result, we receive the impression, yet again, that we are only scratching the surface of who he is. A great many people trust him as “a perfectly incorruptible fellow”, but others know him as “the generous, the terrible, the inconstant Capataz de Cargadores”. Who is he really?

This situation is further muddied when certain epithets, such as “incorruptible” are used not without a hint of irony – but only at times, so that we never know how much the irony reflects truth, or distracts from it. Early on in the book we are told of a character that “so far, she too was under the spell” of Nostromo’s reputation. Is the “so far” a warning, or a red herring? Does “spell” refer to something that is backed up by the rest of the story, or is it the mark of an evil man and sorcerer? I certainly shan’t reveal the truth here – I just want to indicate the range of methods by which Conrad fashions the character of Nostromo while leaving him nonetheless a mystery for us to piece together.

We see Nostromo as gestures, and we hear him more through reported speech than through his own mouth. Conrad gives us masses of information but never enough of the man to make sense of them. To my mind at least, it is a fascinating way of showing how modernism disrupted our notions of certainty and character. Conrad can’t tell us who Nostromo is, but his characters all get the chance to have a go. Yet each explanation seems to contradict the next one, leaving us even more confused than when we started out. And yet we know that under all of these explanations there must be a man. The challenge in reading Nostromo partially becomes trying to locate this man and understand who he is and what it is that drives him.

Conclusion

The depths given to Nostromo are great, but there are many other characters in the novel who are fascinating in their own way, from taciturn Englishman Charles Gould, the owner of the mine, to the indignant General Montero whose decision to start a revolution forms the key conflict of the book. It isn’t just the characters of Nostromo that make the novel great, but also its exciting plot, filled with tricks and turns including even buried treasure. Conrad lures us in with the promise of adventure, and then reveals something far more complex lying under the novel’s surface – a modern myth, yes, but also a highly political novel, and a brutally sad story of our common exploitation of the South American nations, long after formal colonialism had ended. It’s a really cool book, and thoroughly recommended. Even though I only managed to finish it the third time through…

An interesting comparison to Nostromo would probably be Salvatore Satta’s novel, The Day of Judgement, which I talk about here. Both novels explore the changes in sleepy rural society around the beginning of the twentieth century, and how far we should consider our notion of “progress” to be a positive thing.

Did you enjoy Nostromo as much as I did? Did Conrad’s style derange you rather than dazzle? Why not leave a comment below

James Hilton’s Lost Horizon and the Problems of Peace

Introduction: Adventure and its Contexts

Lost Horizon is an adventure novel by James Hilton and the origin of “Shangri-La”, the mythic lamasery in the Himalayas. But as is the case with many of the best examples of this genre, though in Lost Horizon adventure means an escape from the everyday world it certainly doesn’t mean an escape from its concerns; instead, we find that it is only when we’re far away from the world that we can truly understand it, and indeed ourselves and where our place in it should be – in it, or out. For this isa book concerned at its heart with how far we can escape the world we all live in, and whether or not we should.

A painting of a few climbers above the ice on a mountain ridge.
A painting by Nicholas Roerich, a Russian artist working in India’s Himalayas at the same time as Lost Horizon is set.

The book was published in 1933 – the year that Hitler came to power in Germany – and the bulk of its action takes place in 1931, a year no more confident in itself. Wars between China and Japan, and the beginnings of the end of the British Empire, are also key points of context. But perhaps the most significant is the First World War and the experience there of grinding slaughter, which in large part contributed to a great feeling of decline, both cultural and spiritual, which permeate Lost Horizon. Our main character, an Englishman named Conway, suffers acutely from his time in the trenches. But more on him shortly.

Plot and Structure

Lost Horizon begins with a frame narrative, detailing an after-dinner discussion between old school friends that leads, as these things often do, to questions about mutual friends and what has become of them. Rutherford, a novelist friend of the narrator’s, enquires about a plane hijacking that took place in Baskul in Persia, and learns that – as he suspected – their mutual friend from Oxford,  “Glory” Conway, was on board. But nobody knows where the plane was taken to after it was commandeered – the passengers mysteriously disappeared. However, once they are alone the novelist confides to his friend that he does know what happened to Conway, and provides him with a manuscript recording what Conway told him when they met afterwards. This manuscript makes up the rest of the story.

Four people are on board the hijacked plane – there is a woman, a Christian missionary; Conway, a soldier who had taught at Oxford after the war and now aimlessly works in the Consular Service; an American businessman; and a young and impetuous soldier, Mallinson. Though they try to get into the cockpit, their pilot is armed and is able to defend himself, and eventually they leave off and enjoy the journey. They are flown high into the Himalayas, where eventually their pilot crashes in the middle of a high and alien plateau. Without food or water, and with the hijacker dying from his wounds, they await their own deaths.

But instead rescue comes in the form of a mysterious Chinese man, who introduces himself as Chang, and his servants who bear him on a chair. He offers to lead these helpless people to the lamasery of Shangri-La, where they have everything that the others could possibly want. With no other choice, all of the outsiders agree, and they undertake the arduous journey up to the lamasery with the group.

Shangri-La

What is the new world like to which the characters of Lost Horizon are brought? The first thing they notice is that the lamasery has central heating, which is quite extraordinary given its geographical isolation. But it offers much more than that. The central tenant, Change explains, of the lamas is “moderation”. They work, but not too hard; they obey the rules, but not all the time. They live in a world of ultimate relaxation, because their demands upon themselves are only “moderate” too. It is, from a mental point of view, already sounding like paradise. But things get better still – the lamas, who are all hidden within the lamasery, Chang not yet being fully admitted, are also gifted with extraordinarily long lives, further reducing the pressure upon them. They can take their time with their goals.

A Painting of a lama standing alone in front of some mountains as the sun sets
Peace and all the time in the world to read and think and enjoy life – this is what Shangri-La offers. But is it really “life” when it is so far removed from the outside world?

Each of the characters reacts to this little utopia in their own way. The missionary decides to learn Tibetan so as to convert the locals who live in the valley by the lamasery; the American decides to make use of the gold reserves of the valley, and its women – who are only “moderately” chaste; Mallinson spends his time planning his escape; and Conway seems to spend his time relaxing and thinking. In Shangri-La, hidden away, he has time for thought. He says that the whole place reminds him of Oxford, it doesn’t seem so far away from an ideal version of my own time at Cambridge either. I was in fact given Lost Horizon by a friend from uni as a parting gift, since both of us enjoy our studying too much, perhaps dangerously so.

Against the outside world, whose continuous decline towards coming cataclysmic war is evident to all the characters, Shangri-La offers a world without connections, without obligations. Nothing here has any effect anywhere else – nobody leaves, and the system by which the lamasery receives books and other objects from the outside world remains shrouded in mystery – but all this is its great weakness, just as it is its great source of strength. The characters learn that they will have to decide for themselves whether to stay, or to make the hazardous journey back to the rest of the civilized world. And it is not an easy decision to make.

“Glory” Conway and the legacy of the First World War

Conway’s nickname comes from his schooldays, when he was one of those talented, lovable people in private education who seem to be able to do absolutely everything that they set their mind to. But the war breaks him, leaving him mature before his time, and he hides among the ivory towers of Oxford afterwards. Then, when his stint in the Consular Service comes, there is still a sense of dislocation very much apparent. He floats between far flung territories without ever reconnecting with the world – he has no ambition to drive him in his work, and his relationships just fizzle out. Whether he is satisfied or not is hard to say, but it is clear that his glory days from school and before the War are behind him.

In Shangri-La he has a place where he can work to his heart’s content. He can study and learn and play music and make idle chit chat. He can do all of those things that he would do in the outside world, but in a protected environment where his actions would no longer be challengeable for being derelictions of his duty. If he stays in Shangri-La there is no duty, except to yourself and your own whimsy. And the world that such an attitude has created is wonderful – it is a place of bliss and peace. But we know from the frame narrative that Conway doesn’t stay, and the question then becomes “Why did he go?”

Values in a World of Decline

O Public School. I have good memories of Winchester, where in the toilets an oversized phallus could be scrawled next to the words “Sic transit gloria Monday” (a pun on “sic transit gloria mundi” – thus passes the glory of the world). The education I received went far beyond learning how to do well in exams – it also encompassed things like having an appreciation and understanding for culture in general. Though it is unfair that I received what others did not, I am certainly glad that I had the chance. I would not be the person I am otherwise.

A Painting of a blue mountain
The mountain that rises above Shangri-La is called Blue Moon by the locals. Here is perhaps how it would have appeared to the travellers.

Public school has not changed much since Conway was there, though the people who go there have. I mention all of this because in the battle to find something worthwhile in this world where everything is falling apart, Lost Horizon seems to hit upon public school and something akin to “British public school” values as the answer. Conway represents something of an enlightened representative of this group of old boys, able to indicate what is good and what is not good. He regularly comes down against racism and notions of racial superiority, and he is also critical of the attitude that the “bally Empire [be] the Fifth Form at St Dominics”.

But at the same time, it is notions of honour and duty that finally spur him out of his self-confessed idleness into action. All of us who have been to private school have the choice between hiding from the world and acting self-interestedly, or acting in service of the world out of respect for the gifts we have been given by our fortunate position. Shangri-La offers the best chance of achieving the former, but it cannot come without a sense of guilt, however small, for the duty we are failing to fulfil. The world may be approaching the greatest conflict it has yet known, but Conway is not going to avoid it by siting around in the mountains, pretending it is not going on. Such are the views and the values he choses to set his store by. I like to think he is right.

Conclusion

The other characters react in different ways, and Lost Horizon contains many more mysteries than those I have described here. It is also a surprisingly funny book, with lots of jokes about British attitudes and ways of thinking that made me laugh. It has its serious message about the dangers of turning our backs on the world, but if you just want to enjoy a story about a magical lamasery hidden in the Himalayas, then it absolutely works on that level too. It’s good fun.

My friend James, who recommended Lost Horizon to me, has a blog here. He’s very talented and has been doing this for much longer than I have