276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 1): 1918-38

£17.5£35.00Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

There are one or two people at court, around the royal family, who Channon really takes against and who he feels are conspiring to get rid of Edward VIII. And that didn’t come out in the original version.” A gay relationship with “a very prominent friend” was also censored and will be revealed for the first time. The diaries are candid. “There’s an awful lot of drinking and drug-taking – not necessarily by him – but it’s a very decadent society he moves in,” said Heffer. Most of his friends don’t work for a living. “They are the idle rich. And he looks at it and he’s not censorious, but he describes it in great detail.” Channon's parents were Henry Channon II and his wife Vesta ( née Westover), [3] known as Harry. [4] After graduating from Francis W. Parker School and taking classes at the University of Chicago, [5] Channon travelled to France with the American Red Cross in October 1917 and became an honorary attaché at the American embassy in Paris the next year. [3] Channon associated with the artistic elite of Paris, having dinners with the writer Marcel Proust and poet Jean Cocteau. [6] 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]

Channon, pictured here in 1934, was an American-born member of the British Parliament and an expert social climber whose recently released diaries are causing a stir in elite circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Bettmann // Getty Images

Select a format:

On the same visit he was entranced by Hermann Goering (“his merry eyes twinkled… a lovably disarming man”), impressed by Joseph Goebbels, who he thought looked like Clement Attlee, and was easily fooled by a Potemkin concentration camp (“tidy, even gay, and the boys, all about 18, looked like the ordinary German peasant boy, fair, healthy and sunburned”). He concludes, after a conversation about the left-wing outrages in Spain, that Germany is not communist only thanks to Hitler: “Oh! England wake up. You in your sloth and conceit are ignorant of the Soviet dangers and will not realise that… Germany is fighting our battles.” At last, after a three hours’ conversation I promised to let her know my decision in January. Of course I shall give in – but it is the end of Southend, of a peerage, of my political aspirations, of vast wealth and great names and position – all gone, or going. Somehow I didn’t care as I ought. Will I marry again? Or shall I live with Peter?

There are exceptions. Channon idolised Lord Curzon, the former governor-general of India and cabinet minister, and his portrait of this deeply strange and complex man is gripping. When the people he is describing are particularly fruity, the diary comes alive again, as with a visit to the Duke of Argyll in 1925: “They are an odd brace, this brother and sister both past 50 and still unmarried. Lady Elspeth is the manlier of the two. Her dirty hair and unkempt appearance and appalling figure cannot hide her great beauty and distinction. She wore a knitted dressing gown that very nearly wreaked havoc with my appetite. Argyll talks in a high falsetto voice about Celtic legends and folklore and ritualism and bells – bells are his hobby…” In the following diary entries (the bold text indicates redacted information that has never been seen before) the realities are laid bare, amid the fear of invasion and the Blitz. Channon, who then gives the reader a ringside seat at the abdication crisis, is delighted that Edward VIII is also rumoured to be a Nazi-sympathiser, and constantly ridicules doddering old Winston Churchill, Duff Cooper and others who could see what was coming. He is honest enough to accept that he is a coward, who desperately hopes he will be too old to fight in any coming war.For all his gross misogyny, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, Nazi sympathies, and world-class snobbery, Chips Channon was undoubtedly an inspired diarist. However repulsive a figure he was, after devouring this volume, readers will be anxious for the next. The author A difficult, discouraging day, really. After Questions I rushed home to receive Honor who was as mad as a hatter: she was polite, readily agreed to surrendering Kelvedon... I am to have Paul; I am to have Belgrave Square; I am to be rich; I shall have the world’s sympathy . . .

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment