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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] a b c d e f g h i j k Davenport-Hines, Richard, "Channon, Sir Henry (1897–1958)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, accessed 29 August 2009 Carreño, Richard (2011). Lord of Hosts: The Life of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon. Philadelphia, PA: WritersClearinghousePress. pp.43–46, 51–53. ISBN 978-1-257-02549-7.
The most gripping arc in the diary, though, concerns the abdication, pressing so close that you can smell its feverish breath. Channon is a fan of Wallis Simpson – surprising given that she is another provincial American on the make. But he genuinely admires her as “a good kindly woman who has had an excellent influence on the young monarch”. She has, he is sure, no particular plan to marry the king and certainly no desire to upset the country. By contrast the Duchess of York, whom we know better as the Queen Mother, is a frisky little sexpot with whom half of Clubland is in love, including Channon himself: “Darling Elizabeth, I could die for her.” She won’t make a decent queen, though, because, unlike disciplined Wallis, she can’t get up on time, is prone to making catty remarks and, absolutely worst of all, has started putting on weight. Anyway, Channon asks, who cares which one of them gets to be queen since neither of them is actually royal? For his money, Princess Marina of Greece, the luscious, promiscuous well-dressed wife of his lover the Duke of Kent, would have done the job better than either. 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 ] 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 ] Chips, of course, loathed the middle-class with a passion: “How I detest the middle classes! Two from Southend proposed themselves to tea at the House and stayed two hours, never knowing when to leave!!” Many of us feel that way, but it is nice to know that the upper classes from their landed estates share the same distaste for the same people as the working class from their council estates, as well as pleasing to read Channon let rip into them with both barrels. Carley, Michael Jabara (1999). 1939 The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 9781461699385.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 it’s not that simple – 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 “Chips”, his name practically a byword for gossipy flamboyance and indiscretion. When first published in 1967, nine years after his death, the diaries were an instant sensation, a stunning fresco of the British social-political haut monde by an American interloper whose eye never seemed to sleep. Robert Rhodes James quotes in his introduction to the diaries a self-portrait written by Channon on 19 July 1935:
Lexden, Lord (23 March 2021). "Sex and politics in inter-war Britain" (PDF). The House . Retrieved 24 March 2021– via Lord Lexden.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] The MP and socialite 'Chips' Channon was an unlikeable character - bitchy, snobby, prejudiced and caustic. But those vices make him an entertaining diarist. This is the final volume of a triologywhich provides a running commentary on high society and politics from the 1920s onwards, edited with aplomb by Simon Heffer. Biography and Memoir Book of the Year 2022, The Times 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.
a b c d McSmith, A, "Original Westminster hellraiser: The secret world of Chips Channon", The Independent, 13 April 2007 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]He wrote two more books: a second novel, Paradise City (1931) about the disastrous effects of American capitalism, [3] and a non-fiction work, The Ludwigs of Bavaria (1933). The latter, a study of the last generations of the ruling Wittelsbach dynasty of Bavarian kings, received excellent notices, and was in print twenty years later. Some critical reservations reflected Channon's adulation of minor European royalty: The Manchester Guardian said of his account of the 1918 revolution, "he seems to have depended almost exclusively on aristocratic sources, which are most clearly insufficient." [11] Despite this, the book was described on its reissue in 1952 as "a fascinating study... excellently written". [12] I love diaries, and long books, and anything about the period of British history from the 1920s to the 1950s. So given that this is all of this, it was bound to be a good choice for me. 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! Carreño, Richard (2011). Lord of Hosts: The Life of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon. Philadelphia, PA: WritersClearinghousPress. ISBN 978-1-257-02549-7. This rich and weighty final volume of his Diaries encapsulates the last 15 years of Channon's life through which he --- no longer likely to secure any ministerial preference or power in his capacity as a Conservative Member of Parliament for having been a supporter of Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement --- becomes deeply immersed in describing "events in and around Westminster", in addition to "gossiping about individual MPs' ambitions and indiscretions." He shares with the reader much of what his social life developed into via his relationships with many of the notable figures of the era (e.g. the popularly acclaimed playwright Terance Rattigan with whom he once formed a close, intimate relationship whilst remaining contentedly linked with his beloved "Bunny" --- Peter Coats, a man 13 years his junior whom he had met in the summer of 1939 --- despite the prolonged separation imposed on both of them by the war in which Coats served as an aide to General Archibald "Archie" Wavell who later became the next to last Viceroy of India).
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. a b c Cooke, Rachel (28 February 2021). "Gossip, sex and social climbing: the uncensored Chips Channon diaries". The Guardian . Retrieved 2 January 2022. No praise is too high for Simon Heffer’s editing of these irresistible records of upper-class life in a vanished Britain This volume comes in at 1,092 pp., aside from a very comprehensive index, and has several photos of 'Chips' Channon and some of the people with whom he had longstanding relationships. Furthermore, like the previous 2 volumes, this one has ample footnotes which are helpful in further illuminating the events and personalities who fell within Channon's private, social, and political circles. At times, it also reads like a novel, some of whose passages either unsettled me to some extent or made me laugh or smile. Whatever can be said about Channon is that he pulls no punches. His love for his only child Paul is one of the constants in his life. It’s that proximity and his peculiarly honest if often bewildering and sometimes distasteful interests and opinions, that make his insights (right or wrong) so compelling.Colville, John. The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries, Volume 1. London, Sceptre, 1986, ISBN 0-340-40269-5
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