Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 3): 1943-57: The Diaries; 1943-57 (The Henry Chips Channon: The Diaries)

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It is to be hoped that a single volume of the Channon diaries will be produced. This smaller portion of Chips is needed for the general reader who may not wish to plod through endless accounts of conversations with titled people and minor royalty. However, for the serious student of Britain in the inter-war and post-war period, these three volumes taken together are an essential primary source.

Duchesses float in and out, there are excursions to Versailles and notes-to-self – 'I long for an affair in the grand manner' Channon was first elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1935. In his political career he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Rab Butler at the Foreign Office from 1938 in the Chamberlain administration and though he retained that position under Winston Churchill he did not subsequently achieve ministerial office, partly as a result of his close association with the Chamberlain faction. He is remembered as one of the most famous political and social diarists of the 20th century. His diaries were first published in an expurgated edition in 1967. They were later released in full, edited by Simon Heffer and published by Hutchinson in three volumes, between 2021 and 2022. [1] [2] Biography [ edit ] Early years [ edit ] a b c "A Chronicle of the British Establishment's Flirtation with Hitler". The Economist. 4 March 2021 . Retrieved 4 January 2022. Channon, who was a naturalised British subject (as of 11 July 1933), [17] joined the Conservative Party. At the 1935 general election, he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Southend, the seat previously held by his mother-in-law Gwendolen Guinness, Countess of Iveagh. After boundary changes in 1950, he was returned for the new Southend West constituency, holding the seat until his death in 1958. [4]

This third and final volume of the unexpurgated diaries of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon begins as the Second World War is turning in the Allies' favour. It ends with a prematurely aged Chips descending into poor health but still socially active and able to turn a pointed phrase about the political events that swirl around him and the great and the good with whom he mingles. Once it became clear that he would not achieve ministerial office, Channon focused on his other goal of elevation to the peerage, but in this, too, he was unsuccessful. The highest honour he achieved was a knighthood in 1957. [3] His friend Princess Marthe Bibesco sent him a telegram, "Goodbye Mr. Chips" (referencing the 1934 novella of that name by James Hilton). [22] Channon, who smoked and drank heavily, died from a stroke at a hospital in London on 7 October 1958, at the age of 61. [23] [24] Legacy [ edit ] Diaries [ edit ] He wasn’t too keen on the rest of the Royal Family, either. Chips avoided the Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend affair, “as I don’t like either of them.” He blamed it on the “fat Queen Mother” for being too lazy to stop the affair from becoming a public scandal, and fulminated that Margaret was “a silly, selfish, ill-mannered sensationalist,” Townsend he dismissed with his greatest insult of being “middle-class.” So far so good. However, he really was a flawed and often repellent man. An appeaser, based on his fascistic sympathies, rather than on the grounds of loving peace, he was ultra right-wing, and a terrible snob. His views on Jews in particular, are vile, and would have been then, let alone now.

Chips writes with such vividness that one feels one is living each day in his exalted company . . . An infectious joie de vivre permeates . . . No reader could not be absorbed by his unorthodox depiction of 1940s London and the following decade. Oldie It is a pity that Channon only commented on events that he was directly involved in, so there is no analysis of the Suez Crisis of 1956. Simon Heffer thinks that this may be due to the fact that Channon was in the last year of his life, but it strikes me as being more likely that he just didn’t care because he wasn’t at the centre. You are wooed into a world of upper-class intrigue and indiscretions, played out in Westminster, Belgravia and snooty country mansions. Books of the Year, Daily Mail Magnificently indiscreet . . . No praise is too high for the diaries' editor Simon Heffer . . . Channon excels in descriptions of great parliamentary events . . and other accounts of important occasions, read in their entirety, are profoundly moving . . . What unending joy Channon will bring to his readers through these irresistible records of upper-class life in a vanished Britain. Lord Lexden, The House magazine Nevertheless, he is a great chronicler of events during the first half of the last century. Even his failure to understand them gives us an insight into how men of his time and class thought; thus he gives us a window into the world of the upper-class Tory grandee, still at the height of his power. As an individual, I suspect that an evening with Channon would be an engaging night to remember as like many an old queen he comes over as a gossip-hound of note.Apart from politics, the main themes of the diaries are wining and dining, and sex. The chandeliers glittered on endless lunch and dinner parties, at which the finest champagnes accompanied delicious fare, even during the War when strict rationing was supposed to be in force.

At the start of his diaries, Channon’s diaries focused somewhat on politics (unsurprising, for a politician). He couldn’t come to a conclusion decision if he had a gun to his head, but he was clearly involved in things (albeit somewhat peripherally). By this book, he had given up all pretence of being an active politician, and was more focused on his social life. The result was he wrote endlessly about his dinners with actors and deposed Eastern European royalty, but barely about political issues. This would be fine, but for the fact some serious issues (like Suez) occurred during the course of the book. To make things sadder still, it looks as though the British royal family is going the same way. The general strike of 1926 and the increasing influence of Labour MPs at Westminster – “Bolshies” snorts Channon, who was returned as Conservative member for Southend in 1935 – suggests that George V’s reign could be the last. Not least because the next generation is so unsuited to the job. The four boys – the Prince of Wales and the Dukes of York, Kent and Gloucester – all seem nervy, epicene, mummy-damaged (although Queen Mary herself, all chilly sparkle, is naturally divine). Not that this stops Chips becoming friends with all of them, and allegedly sleeping with at least one. Things have got really bad when he notices that the Duke of Kent, who has popped round to dinner from next door, has taken to wearing trousers that have a zip instead of a button fly. It is like hearing the tumbrels rumble in the street. Reviewing the published diaries in The Observer in November 1967, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, "Grovellingly sycophantic and snobbish as only a well-heeled American nesting among the English upper classes can be, with a commonness that positively hurts at times. And yet – how sharp an eye! What neat malice! How, in their own fashion, well written and truthful and honest they are! … What a relief to turn to him after Sir Winston's windy rhetoric, and all those leaden narratives by field-marshals, air-marshals and admirals!" [34]Channon, Henry (1967). Rhodes James, Robert (ed.). Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 978-1-85799-493-3. The world is so different now o few this is like reading the diaries of a much more historical figure. He is certainly a rival to Peeps (though less immediately engaging because of the narrowness of him and his sphere of interest). That there were still people who actually thought and behaved as he did in those not so far off days was an eye opener for me and makes me wonder what I am naive about today! Simon Heffer justifies some of this by saying he was ill pretty regularly towards the end of the book. He was, however, well enough to socialise with royalty throughout this period. I shall miss his voice despite everything, and that of Tom Ward equally. Without doubt award is a great narrator and actor, certainly in the class of Gielgud or Olivier, or I should not have been so engaged for so long. Why don’t I know him? I shall seek anything else he has narrated.

Four previously unknown volumes turned up at a car boot sale in 1991. [37] It was reported after Paul Channon's death that his heir, the diarist's grandson, was considering authorising the publication of the uncensored texts. [9] An unexpurgated three-volume edition, edited by journalist and historian Simon Heffer has now been published; the first volume was published in March 2021. [38] While the 1967 edition began in 1934, the complete version begins in 1918, and runs to 1938. [39] However, diaries Channon wrote between 1929 and 1933 remain missing. The second volume, running from 1938 to 1943, was published on 9 September 2021; [40] the third volume, covering years from 1943 to 1957, was published on 8 September 2022. [6] [41] Throughout these final fourteen years Chips assiduously describes events in and around Westminster, gossiping about individual MPs' ambitions and indiscretions, but also rising powerfully to the occasion to capture the mood of the House on VE Day or the ceremony of George VI's funeral. His energies, though, are increasingly absorbed by a private life that at times reaches Byzantine levels of complexity. We encounter the London of the theatre and the cinema, peopled by such figures as John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and Douglas Fairbanks Jr, as well as a seemingly endless grand parties at which Chips might well rub shoulders with Cecil Beaton, the Mountbattens, or any number of dethroned European monarchs. In his comments accompanying the published selection, Rhodes James stated that "Peter Coats edited the original MS of the Diaries." [30] He also stated that Coats arranged the preparation of a complete typescript of the Diaries as Channon's handwriting was often difficult to read. [31] Coats also carried out an initial expurgation before the editorial discretion exercised by Rhodes James. [32]In July 1939, Channon met the landscape designer Peter Daniel Coats (1910–1990), with whom he began an affair that may have contributed to Channon's separation from his wife the following year. His wife, who had conducted extra-marital affairs from at least 1937, asked Channon for a divorce in 1941 as a result of her affair with Frank Woodsman, a farmer and horse dealer who was based close to their Kelvedon Hall estate. Their marriage was finally dissolved in 1945. [3] Channon formally sued for divorce and his wife did not contest the suit. [16] Among others with whom Channon had a relationship was the playwright Terence Rattigan. Channon was on close terms with Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and the Duke of Kent, although whether those relationships extended beyond the platonic is not known. [3] Politics [ edit ] A veritable treasure trove . . . Generations to come will view Heffer's work as an incredible source for studying the interwar, war and postwar years. Yet, the diaries are also a human story, portraying a man's life from early adulthood to premature death. Chips knew everyone, went everywhere and had an opinion on everything. The Critic Magazine After George VI's accession Channon's standing in royal circles went from high to low and, as an appeaser, so did his standing in the Conservative party after the failure of appeasement and the appointment of the anti-appeaser Winston Churchill as prime minister. Channon remained loyal to the supplanted Neville Chamberlain, toasting him after his fall as "the King over the Water", and sharing Butler's denigration of Churchill as "a half-breed American". [21] Channon remained a friend of Chamberlain’s widow. Channon's interest in politics waned after this, and he took an increasing interest in the Guinness family brewing interests, though remaining a conscientious and popular constituency MP. [4]