Henry Chips Channon: The Diaries 1918-38 review â priceless interwar gossip
Chips and Lady Honor Guinness at their wedding in July 1933. Photograph: Trustees of the literary estate of Henry âChipsâ Channon
Chips and Lady Honor Guinness at their wedding in July 1933. Photograph: Trustees of the literary estate of Henry âChipsâ Channon
Editor Simon Heffer brings us the first, sensationally unexpurgated volume of the musings of the Chicago-born socialite and social climber
Sun 4 Apr 2021 06.00 EDT
The great diarists get away with it. No matter how foolish or spiteful or pompous they appear in print, they transcend faults of character by the simple virtue of brilliant writing. Only itâs not that simple â if it were, everyone would do it. In the first half of the 20th century, no diarist in English would achieve greater notoriety than Henry Channon, AKA âChipsâ, his name practically a byword for gossipy flamboyance and indiscretion. When
Like many others in 1930s Britain, Henry Channon was terrified of communism and thought Hitler was the one man who could save Europe from Stalin.
At the time, Winston Churchill was one of only a few British politicians who thought Hitler posed a threat. Channon, in common with many other MPs, felt Churchill was dangerous and that his obsession with Germany would lead inevitably to war.
In 1936, Chips and his wife Honor were guests of the Nazi regime at the Berlin Olympic Games. His record of that trip is as naive as it is shocking, both in his undisguised admiration of Hitler and in his account of a visit to a Nazi labour camp, where he reported cheerful inmates looking healthy and well-fed.
When they were first published in 1967, the diaries of MP Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon enthralled and appalled the nation in equal measure. Malicious and delicious, the diaries skewered some of the grandest names in society and politics.
What no one realised was that the diaries had been heavily censored. Now they are being published for the first time in their full, outrageous glory.
The American-born Chips, as he was known, settled in Britain after graduating from Oxford and became a social climber on a grand scale, becoming friendly with the future Edward VIII the then Prince of Wales in 1920.
Chips (pictured) was bisexual and had numerous sexual liaisons with both men and women. Our second extract features some of those, together with his fabulously indiscreet observations about London society
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor are pictured above in 1937, after his abdication
When they were first published in 1967, the diaries of MP Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon enthralled and appalled the nation in equal measure.
Malicious and delicious, the diaries skewered some of the grandest names in society and politics.
What no one realised was that the diaries had been heavily censored. Now, they are being published for the first time in their full, outrageous glory.
American-born Chips, as he was known, settled in Britain after graduating from Oxford and became a social climber on a grand scale, becoming friendly with the future Edward VIII the then Prince of Wales in 1920.