Goodbye Mr. Chips, by James Hilton

When I was growing up, I was always aware of the books in the (very small) bookcase in our sitting room. They were the books that my parents enjoyed reading, rather than being books chosen to display what might have been considered a “proper” taste in literature. I do not mean to imply criticism when I say this, only to explain that those books represented an honest choice, instead of being put there to impress. Most of the authors are long-forgotten. My mother’s shelf was full of Jeffery Farnol; my father inclined to Dornford Yates and Ernest Raymond, but his selection also included James Hilton. The Jeffery Farnol titles were discarded before I got my hands on them, but many of the books have ended up in my own bookcase, often remaining unread by me. 

I should have been finishing Ken’s biography, but it is a very big fat book, and I only had two chapters left to read, and for that reason didn’t want to take it away on holiday. So I cast around for something short, light to carry and, not wanting to end up with two unfinished books, easy to read at speed. Goodbye Mr. Chips certainly filled the bill in all three respects. 

It is almost unimaginable that any modern author would write such a short book, only 128 pages, small thick pages of big type. I read it easily in two sessions before bed. It is the sentimental story of an elderly schoolmaster in an English public school, full of the ideals of duty, honour, sportsmanship and decency which are only trotted out nowadays as the butt of satirical humour. The world has moved on, and properly so, and the book is a period piece. My father was the contemporary of the boys in the book and the product of that world. The book was first published in 1934, referring often to the sacrifice made by former schoolboys killed in the First World War and with no knowledge of events to come; my father bought it in 1948 (he signed and dated his books) when he was fresh out of the chaos of the Second. I wonder whether he read it with nostalgia, knowing as we do that it described a society and culture lost for ever; or whether he read it in the hope and expectation that once a settled peace had been restored the clock could and would be turned back to those golden days?