James Hilton

I confess I have a weakness for a novel that tells a story. It can do lots of other things besides, and its scenes can be laid in Tennessee or Timbuktu or Tibet. But a story, please, a story. I believe that people like stories, and I believe that romantic and adventurous stories will hold their popularity because, with all its drawbacks, the romantic and adventurous view of life is the most sensible.

James Hilton, author of several famous novels, including Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr Chips.

Quoted in the Afterword to Lost Horizon, Readers Digest edition, 1990

Ms P H again

Well, Paris Hilton is back in jail - or gaol - or both. I only wanted to make a note of this to show that I keep up with the news...
Actually, I haven't been keeping up with the news as much. About a month ago we stopped getting a newspaper at home because we weren't getting the time to read it - and I was reading some of it at work. We don't watch tv news much because it's so often just magazine-style material and not real news at all. And since I only listen to the Concert program - when I do listen to the radio - I don't hear much news on there either.
So, how did I hear about P H?? I'm staying at my daughter's at present, and the tv is always on. Sometimes the news makes it into the room, and so tonight the re-arrest of Ms H was on, and given a good deal more importance than the deaths of 25 people in the floods in the Middle East, or even the deaths of a whole family in floods in Australia. Oh, dear, how we do delight in thinking that so-called celebrities are important.

Ms P Hilton

I thought New Zealand was supposed to be the home of tall-poppy-cutting-down, but when it comes to celebrities, the US of A well and truly holds its own. The cries of 'Jail Paris Hilton' rang loud and clear throughout the land, and have gotten even louder since she's been released on home detention after just a few days in jail. The whole thing is absurd, and once again shows how the American system of justice can be so easily undermined. Celebrities don't appear to get their just desserts, but neither do people who have none of the wealth and power. They are more likely to make up the time that the celebrities don't have to do. You might say that balances things out, but of course that's hardly the point.