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He loves beauty in places, people and things, and his sister on the persecution of gay men in the 1950s is enlightening and depressing at the same time. No praise is too high for Simon Heffer’s editing of these irresistible records of upper-class life in a vanished Britain Despite his sometimes caustic rumination’s on the opposition and on his own party in and out of Govt. He kept his head down and played the game, he was a loyal party member when it came to voting, and this meant he was able not only to survive for a very long time himself, but to pas his seat on to his son, in a way that had almost ceased to exist by the time of that change. 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]
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 the years covered by this final volume, Channon slept with one woman, a rich American more than 20 years his junior. Otherwise his bed was filled by men. The bedfellows included his brother-in-law, Alan Lennox-Boyd, a cabinet minister in the 1950s, whose passionate relationships with a succession of young men occupy much space in the diary. At various points in his life Channon kept a series of diaries. Under his will, he left his diaries and other material to the British Museum "on condition that the said diaries shall not be read ... until 60years from my death." [25] An expurgated selection from the diaries was published in 1967. [26] The necessity for expurgation is illustrated by the reaction of an Oxford contemporary who, when told that no diaries from that period existed, said, "Thank God!" [27] The editor of the original edition, Robert Rhodes James, said he saw well-connected people go white when they heard that Channon had kept a journal. [9] 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 ]Three formidable volumes have appeared, admirably edited by Simon Heffer displaying considerable scholarship . . . Channon, for all his misjudgements, ingratiating behaviour and bigotry, is revealing about public and private life, society and sexuality, and honest about himself to a degree that makes these Diaries a weird kind of masterpiece. LRB The diaries] have disappointed no one in search of gossip, breathtaking snobbery and prejudice, as well as being a window on the political scene . . . It's the parliamentary picture that is of chief value. Channon was a political lightweight, but his diaries will be a historians' resource for centuries. Country Life Channon was born in Chicago to an Anglo-American family. In adult life he took to giving 1899 as his year of birth, and was embarrassed when a British newspaper revealed that the true year was 1897. [3] His grandfather had immigrated to the US in the mid-nineteenth century and established a profitable fleet of vessels on the Great Lakes, which formed the basis of the family's wealth. [4] Channon's paternal grandmother was descended from eighteenth-century English settlers. [4]
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. In reality Channon’s life had fundamentally changed. He was estranged from his wife Honor, whom he claimed to hate, unkindly describing her as fat and drab. Chips’s gilded lifestyle depended on handouts from the Guinness fortune of Honor’s fabulously rich parents, Lord and Lady Iveagh. Thanks to their generosity, Chips could afford to continue living in the style he was accustomed, even after he and Honor were divorced. 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 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]
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In March 1938, the rising Conservative minister Rab Butler, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office appointed Channon his Parliamentary Private Secretary. [4] Butler was associated with the appeasement wing of the Conservative party, and Channon, as with the abdication, found himself on the losing side. In the words of the ODNB: "Always ferociously anti-communist, he was an early dupe of the Nazis because his attractive German princelings hoped that Hitler might be preparing for a Hohenzollern restoration." At the invitation of Joachim von Ribbentrop, Channon attended the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, where he was very impressed. [18] 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] 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. a b c "A Chronicle of the British Establishment's Flirtation with Hitler". The Economist. 4 March 2021 . Retrieved 4 January 2022. Robert Rhodes James quotes in his introduction to the diaries a self-portrait written by Channon on 19 July 1935:
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