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

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Lexden, Lord (23 March 2021). "Sex and politics in inter-war Britain" (PDF). The House . Retrieved 24 March 2021– via Lord Lexden. 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? 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]

The unexpurgated diaries also reveal how Channon’s close friendship with Edward VIII began in the 1920s. “He writes about travelling around America with him. He can see the Prince of Wales is a slight flibbertigibbet, but he likes him and they have a good friendship. So by the time of the abdication, he’s very supportive of him,” added Heffer.As the diaries progress, Channon becomes more thoughtful, and analyses himself using the casual misogyny of the day: “Sometimes I think I have the character of a very clever woman – able, but trivial, with flair, intuition, great good taste and second-rate ambition: I am susceptible to flattery, and male good looks; I hate and am uninterested in all the things men like such as sport, business, statistics, debates, speeches, war and the weather…” The dishonesty, deviousness and occasional depravities of the upper classes are laid bare: “He will talk about people’s personal lives, their sexual behaviour, their treatment of other people. All human life is there.” In spite of all, I am pro-German: I find myself mysteriously drawn towards the Teutonic race. Is it a reaction against my mother’s violent Francomania which poisoned my childhood?” When he read that Adolf Hitler had the same breed of Hungarian dog as him, “my heart warmed to him in spite of all those military operations which must, sooner or later, lead to war.” In Andrew Holleran’s novels, the inescapable narrowness of his world is transcended and given poetic resonance by his close and steady attention to pain and loneliness.

The first anniversary of the war, if anniversary it can be called. I spent it by the swimming pool, naked, reading Lord Hervey’s absorbing memoirs. 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]The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, contemporaries of Channon’s, are written about at length in his diaries. At one point, he notes, "I don’t think Wallis would be content as the consort of an ex-King: the situation would be untenable." Bettmann // Getty Images 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 ] Carreño, Richard (2011). Lord of Hosts: The Life of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon. Philadelphia, PA: WritersClearinghousPress. ISBN 978-1-257-02549-7. From the window before we landed I saw Peter, brown, amber, alert, handsome, distinguished, stupendous, waiting for me. I rushed out: he seemed enchanted: I was exhilarated, almost delirious with excitement... Peter had arranged a suite, he whispered, at Shepheard’s… We had a rapturous reunion. 1941

Chris Mullin Chips Channon’s judgment was abysmal, but the diaries are a great work of literature Delights of the second volume, edited by Simon Heffer, include a bomb dropping on Channon’s dinner party and an Austrian archduke arriving to clear the debris 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. He dined with Marcel Proust and Jean Cocteau as a young man in Paris in 1918, was a close friend during the abdication crisis to Edward VIII, and partied with Nazis in 1930s Berlin.No one seems to know how he met Honor, the daughter of Lord Iveagh, a member of the Guinness family – the diaries are missing for this period – but with their marriage in 1933, the gates to a lavish world are flung fully open. His father-in-law helps him to buy his house in Belgravia, with its grand dining room, a “symphony” in silver and aquamarine that has been decorated to resemble a certain rococo royal hunting lodge near Munich, and an estate in Essex (though his marriage to Honor doesn’t last; both are determinedly unfaithful – in this volume, she with her skiing instructor). Hugely rich and preposterously well-connected – if there is a ball, Chips will almost certainly be in attendance – he is now well on his way to becoming the Pepys of the interwar years. 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.

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