For those on the trail of a real Shangri-La, the UK has at least 20 on offer, though none is quite like the fabled Himalayan valley that promised tranquillity and lasting youth in the inspiringly hopeful novel of the Thirties, Lost Horizon. Author James Hilton invented the name Shangri-La for a paradise on earth in a book that captured the imagination of a public dealing with financial hardships and the threat of Nazism.
Lost Horizon is still in print and today's publishers report steady sales. There's even a thriving James Hilton Society.
The world today may be too small and too cynical to invent a modern Shangri-La, but the name lives on. Here, in a snapshot of British small business, are five stories of personal hope and triumph ...
Shangri-La guesthouse, Whitley Bay
There's a sharp, salty wind blowing up the Esplanade which tugs the weather-toughened plants in seafront gardens into submission. The heyday of well-heeled Newcastle visitors is long over and landlady Maggie Longton is worried that having the front of her 11-room guesthouse repainted may be an extravagance.
'There used to be lots of people here in and out of season, but now it's a struggle. We all struggle,' she says, focusing her eyes on the empty streets, willing the sun to come out with a flush of tourists. It's not happening; maybe it never will. 'It is very tough - there's not enough for kids to do here so we can't attract families, who are the lifeblood of seaside towns. I think the council wants to turn us into a retirement town not a resort. We are all working seven days a week, doing more for peanuts. I work harder now than I did 20 years ago. People are desperate and some places are offering B&B for £9, en suite £13 - you cannot compete and pay the bills.
'A lot of places are taking in homeless, asylum seekers or young offenders, but I don't want to do that. I could probably get £500 a week for each of them, but you turn into a prison warden not a guest house owner.'
It wasn't always this bleak. Whitley Bay was a stylish playground for the northeast. The bracing winds didn't seem so one-sided then. The seafront was dominated by the Spanish City fairground, which features in the track 'Tunnel of Love' on Dire Straits's Making Movies album. Its attraction faded, and as the paint peeled the holidaymakers headed away on sunshine- guaranteed package trips. Travel trade economics left Whitley Bay to fend for itself.
Maggie, 51, put in the hours for almost 20 years for hotels in the centre of Newcastle, while her husband was in the teeming Swan Hunter yard when the Tyne still clung to its industrial heritage. 'We had a daughter and found that we were working too hard. We decided to buy this place 17 years ago so we could have a bigger family. It was a dream come true,' she says. 'The place was already called Shangri-La. I thought it was a bit cheesy. I was all for having a new name, but my financial adviser said I might lose former customers.
'I got used to it and then I liked it when I found out what it meant - a sort of utopia where you never age. Well, it's not that, because this place has put 40 years on me.'
Shangri-La Chinese restaurant, Newcastle
In the heart of Newcastle, there's a Shangri-La with a story of personal redemption that makes the neon sign above a Chinese restaurant seem almost a tawdry betrayal of Anna Ha's struggle for liberty, status and success.
'I was born in Hanoi, Vietnam, but my family was Chinese,' says Anna, now 48. 'My father was a doctor and we had a good life. We were wealthy and had what we wanted as children. I remember being wonderfully happy - there were 10 of us and life was good.'
But when China clashed with Vietnam in 1975, 16-year-old Anna and her family had to escape because of their Chinese descent. 'It was very frightening. We ended up crossing into China and landing on a beach to evade capture. One of my sisters didn't make it: she stayed behind to say goodbye to her Vietnamese husband and was killed.'
Anna and her penniless family found no warm embrace from China - they were refugees with no status and could not speak the language. They were split up and set to work on farms and in factories.
Escape was the only thing on their mind and after two years they managed to work their way south and raise enough money to buy spaces on a boat from the Cantonese mainland to Hong Kong. 'There were 250 of us crammed into this tiny boat. You could not move. The lucky ones made it; the others died. It took us 10 days, and we had to cope with 30ft waves that swamped the boat. We had no food and water and just had to hope. We saw other boats with dead people in, but we managed to get there. We were lucky.'
Anna, by then 18, joined thousands of Vietnamese living in makeshift detention centres. 'The camp was overcrowded, we had little food and there were riots with the police because the conditions were so bad,' she says. 'But no one thought about going back to China.'
After two years, Anna and her family were granted citizenship through a United Nations humanitarian scheme and she and her two youngest brothers settled in Newcastle.
She worked in restaurants and ran a hair and beauty salon for a time. Anna was divorced shortly after her only son was born 27 years ago and she raised him as a working single mum, all the time striving to lift herself from the drudgery of single parenthood. Four years ago she opened her own restaurant in Newcastle's Chinatown. She had found Shangri-La.
'It was already called Shangri-La and I kept the name because it is a wonderful concept. I've been through hell on earth, so this restaurant is my heaven on earth,' she says. 'It is so much more than a name to me. It is about my journey and how the human spirit can survive. But I am not content with just that. I want to be a success and do the best I can.'
As with any business, making Shangri-La a balance-sheet success rather than a spiritual concept is difficult. Geoffrey Ivory spotted the name on a house in the countryside when he was out on a romantic drive before the Second World War. He vowed that if he ever got his own farm it would be called Shangri-La. Driven by the dream, he set up a small pig farm in the heart of Stevenage, only to be evicted by the new town development that transformed the Hertfordshire village into a bustling town.
Shangri-La Farm settled at Todd's Green on the fringes of the town and became a successful pig and turkey farm in the Fifties. Geoffrey kept the business in the family and invited son-in-law John Watts to help run a concern that included 20,000 turkeys and 2,000 pigs.
'It has been a struggle for a long time now,' says John, whose son Mark now runs the 230-acre farm. Times have changed, and some of the turkey sheds are now home to around 40 small businesses.
'We had to convert the turkey sheds into light industrial units to survive,' adds Watts, 69, whose wife Rae, 63, was Geoffrey's daughter. 'Things were going well, but then, like all the small people, we got done in by the big boys. Sainsbury's opened a big store just down the road - you can almost see it from the farmhouse - and that was the shop finished, really. We carried on, but the squeeze was coming from every area. I realised we couldn't keep going like we were. You have to accept that things change and we had to diversify by letting the buildings.'
Farming is anything but dull, though. The Watts family has seen it all. They've found a dismembered limb in a field and had one of the turkey workers commit suicide - and an attempted murder also stained the green and pleasant pastures.
'We've had fires and break-ins and all sorts of trouble,' says Mr Watts. 'One of our guys committed suicide with a shotgun. I think there was a woman involved.
'We don't have staff now - we manage the units and the estate ourselves. We still love the land and do our best to protect and nurture it, but farming is under so much threat.
'Geoffrey would not recognise his Shangri-La. He knew life and business had to change, but he didn't envy us going forward. Shangri-La was a dream for him and he made it come true, but it is hardly a heaven on earth today. I don't know too much about the legend, but we are happy to keep the name and everyone knows us as that. It is just a bit sad that the name doesn't come with the hope that it once did.'
Shangri-La residential care home, Lee-On-Solent
Shangri-La promised a lasting youth in the original novel, but they practise a more realistic brand of care at the Shangri-La Residential Care Home on Milvil Road, in Lee-on-Solent. The property was built shortly after Lost Horizon was published, and folklore has it that Thirties singer Gracie Fields owned the property and chose the name.
'It was called that when I got here and it has always stuck. I've never thought of leaving,' says Christina Geach, who has worked at the home for 25 years. 'It's always been hard but rewarding work and I like to think there's a calm, peaceful air about the place.'
The home has 20 bedrooms and caters for residents aged 65 to 90, though at one time they had two centenarians on the books. Christina is now the owner, having gone into partnership with friend Bob Geach after her husband died. Their working relationship slowly grew into a romance, and the couple married 10 years ago.
The couple now have a new Shangri-La - a house in its own woods in Ontario. 'We've worked hard for it and felt it only right to call it Shangri-La. It's our retreat,' says Christina. 'There have been good and bad times, but it has been a pleasure to look after all these people.'
There's an air of spirituality at the Shangri-La Tattoo Parlour on the Kingsland Road. Incense takes the edge off the traffic fumes, and colourful paintings and designs around the walls offer a tranquillity punctuated only by the waspish drive of the tattooist's needle.
Lesley Chan opened the corner premises two years ago after learning her profession for eight years around London's tattoo shops. A former fine arts student, she is a devotee of the figurative school of body art. Short sleeves advertise her style - bold yet precise images and pulsing colours that could adorn skin or canvas. 'I didn't get my first tattoo until I was 18 and didn't fall instantly in love with tattoos. But I've being doing it for 10 years now and have acquired a few along the way,' she says.
For Lesley, 40, Shangri-La has been a sanctuary from a difficult separation from her photographer partner. 'We split up and it wasn't good. We had great times, but the split was hard going,' adds Lesley, who was brought up in Auckland, New Zealand. Her two elder sisters became accountants, but she followed a hedonistic journey which included spells as a hitchhiker, a hairdresser and late-night radio DJ until she arrived in the UK 20 years ago.
'My partner and I had drifted apart over the past few years. It was as dark as it gets, and we struggled. I had the kids, but I was really clinging on and it all happened just as I was setting up this business, and that saved me - it was a sanctuary for me. Shangri-La was my safe place. That's why I chose the name. I started it for financial security, but it became something more - a stabilising part of my life.'
The business is going well. Tattoos have emerged from the daggers-and-girls period to become an expressive art form. They are no longer a sackable offence.
'Tattoos can be for any reason - an expression of love, a rite of passage or an identity - we shouldn't really judge a person just from a tattoo. A guy who had lost his son in a car crash came in for a Winnie the Pooh. It was an important part of his grieving and remembrance.'
Lesley is happy for her two children to follow her professional path. 'It would be great to make it a family business, but I would never force them,' she says. 'Shangri-La is a blossoming business, but it's also an enchanting place and means so much more than something that pays the bills.'