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

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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 ] You might think this made him an unlikely candidate as MP for Southend, a large seaside resort popular with working-class Londoners. His attitude toward it was at first frankly careerist—“about five or ten years here and then a peerage” (which is something he repeatedly craves; a knighthood, the year before he died, was as far as he was to get). It’s mainly a question of what the “frumps and snobs” of Southend can do for him: Will they “help or hate me?”

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Only two months more – avant le deluge! – avant le divorce . I am reconciled to the idea now. I shall be free, but shall be a long time recovering from Honor’s selfishness; her treachery, her harlotry; her boredom with the war and with me and her complete indifference – cruel indifference – to her child Apart from the pleasure my divorce will give to my enemies, I am looking forward to it now: I am not sure that it will come off, although Honor seems greatly determined. She is like a woman possessed by a poltergeist. 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? Not only have I failed to make my young self as interesting as the strangers I have written about, but I have withheld my affection.

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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] Peter and I had a rapturous reunion. He told me that he had fixed it for Palestine: ten days’ leave and [we] are off at dawn on Sunday. The world is a lovely, lovely place. His uncensored and vivid observations about the powerful men and women he socialised with and the antics of London society during the interwar years are certain to fascinate his existing fans and will introduce a new generation of readers to his “elegant, gossipy and bitchy” writings. As I arrived [at Kelvedon, Channon’s country house in Essex] I met Honor riding away with her agent, a dark horse-coper [dealer] named Woodman whom I much mistrust. He is a dark stranger and no doubt mulcts her of much money. She is completely dominated by him, probably infatuated and I see serious trouble ahead.

When it comes to the great cultural figures he meets, Channon seems incurious to the point of philistinism. André Gide is “a dreadful, unkempt poet-looking person”. Stravinsky? “A small little man, unimpressive and uninteresting looking like a German dentist. He has no manners.” Proust – with whom Channon may have had a liaison – gets off a little better, but has bad manners, grubby linen and pours out “ceaseless spite and venom about the great”. HG Wells is “common” and “betrays his servant origin”. TE Lawrence is “not a gentleman”. Somerset Maugham? “Of course, not a gentleman”. Heffer, Simon (20 February 2021). "Exclusive: Inside the uncensored diaries of Britain's most scandalous MP". The Telegraph . Retrieved 23 February 2021.Poor darling, she has no moral or common sense, no noblesse oblige and doesn’t realise what she is doing – social suicide. He is a penniless, tough adventurer after her money. I tried to move her without success and I saw that he has carefully trained her, schooled her in what to say. She will regret it to her dying day. She offered to make any adequate financial arrangements for Paul and me; swore that she would never have children by this fellow, declared that she didn’t care what happened; was indifferent to the world’s opinion and disdain. She were better dead . . . It’s not that Channon doesn’t penetrate these inner sanctums. He’s like a deathwatch beetle on Benzedrine. He drills his way into balls, dinners and country house weekends, squeezing his elegant form between European heads of state and English grandees, exchanging catty remarks with dowager duchesses or King George’s solemn children. As soon as he has married a member of the fabulously wealthy Guinness family, he has the King (by now Edward VIII) round to dinner. And the American celebrities who amused the aristos are in the diary jostle too – Tallulah Bankhead, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Cole Porter, Fred Astaire. 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 Good-looking, charming, and possessed with social grace enough to warrant invitations everywhere, Channon set about recording his life with such diligence that one understands that he saw it, and not politics, as his real career. After all, this was a man who blandly recounted burying his diaries alongside Fabergé eggs to protect them during the war.

Carley, Michael Jabara (1999). 1939 The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 9781461699385.It’s just that Chips is, certainly in his younger years, a bit of a ninny. He is so desperate to “make it” in society, and so hypnotised when he gets there, that it’s far too much who and not enough what. He lists who sat next to whom, who was excluded and who is feuding with whom this week rather than the pungent verbal detail. On the rare occasions when he does relate the actual exchanges, there is little detail or colour. For instance, “Lady Scarbrough is very angry with the Astor clan” – American, by origin, of course – “‘What did they do in the War of the Roses?’ she demanded.” 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 ] His contempt for his father and mother, for Chicago (that “cauldron of horror”), and for America in general lent a special intensity to his identification with old Europe and its labyrinthine upper classes. I wish Heffer had said more in his introduction about Channon’s life before the diary opens—the time he had already spent in Europe, the schooling in Paris that must have made him fluently francophone but doesn’t explain how he came to be the darling of the faubourg Saint-Germain eight years later. The short spell at Oxford, a year after the war ended, seems to have confirmed his taste for high, and preferably royal, society. Thereafter he made his home in England, and in 1933 became a British citizen. He lived all his life on money provided by his father and later by his father-in-law, though his terrific energy and excitability meant he was capable of hard work. He certainly saw himself as playing a significant part in the affairs of his adopted country. Channon’s hatred of his native America is visceral. “The word is never on my lips, rarely in my mind,” he claims, unconvincingly. “I never even dream of it and I don’t really believe it exists. I am not at all sure that ugly, horrible continent is not merely the invention of the Rothermere press.” In fact the land of his birth tormented him, and recurs often. ‘I’m always so ashamed of my American passport,’ he writes.