Sir Henry ChannonReseñas

Dear CHIPS! A fantastic diarist, a jaw-dropping snob. He had a ringside seat to history. I didn't think I could follow this as an audiobook, but it turns out to be a splendid way of consuming these fascinating, irritating diaries.

When the heavily censored version of the social climber Henry Channon’s scandalous diaries were first published in 1967, it was replete with juicy gossips, parties with adulterous spouses, and gay friendships. It threw the English world into a tizzy. Now the unredacted volumes are all set to be made available to the public. When intimate details of famous people whom everyone has heard and known for all their lives are made public the masses lapped it up with alacrity. Now, the first volume of the caustic diaries written by the master diarist Chips Channon , edited by the legendary Simon Heffer is out for public scrutiny. Chips Channon’s life is dotted with fancy parties and flashy dinners with the town’s most elegant personalities. From Winston Churchill to Adolf Hitler, from Marcel Proust to Wallis Simpson, Chips Channon’s circle has some distinguished names. His diaries are not just a source that abounds in juicy gossips; it is also a classic for historians opening a window into the long lost world, shedding light on various watershed moments in history like the Berlin Olympics, the abdication crisis, the pre-war Nazi ties with Britain and so on. The diaries shed light on the opulence of the London society and the increasingly decadent lifestyle of the social high class. It brings to life a forgotten epoch . If you have read the Macmillan Diaries, then Chips’ diaries may pique your interest as well. Of course, nothing would be foolhardier than equating them, but Chips Channon’s dairies are equally entertaining on different levels. Buy a copy now and enjoy the saucy, bitchy snippets with which Chips relishes his readers with. T

Sir Henry was a Member of Parliament before, during, and after WWII. Though he took his responsibilities seriously, "Chips" loved his friends and a good party.

This massive (1000+ pages) slice of Channon's diaries falls into two parts. Covering the years October 1938 to mid 1943, the division isn't so much between 'before WWII' and 'during WWII' as between the period while Channon was actively engaged in politics as PPS to Rab Butler, and the period afterwards, when the focus is much more on 'society' – not that Channon lacked that even when he was 'fagging for Butler'.
Reading the diaries is quite a marathon because it can easily seem an endless round of meals and similar events, often with similar casts of characters. How interesting those are will depend on the reader. But within the text there are many nuggets of insights, personal and political, which raise this work well above mere repetition.
Channon is open in his views about other people, other types of people, other races and so on. Much of it would today be 'politically incorrect', and even on a more daily level there are details which show how divorced his life was from the common herd – for example, how insignificant food rationing was to those who could afford to dine often in hotels, and especially those like Channon whose servants no doubt had their own sources of supply for the many delicacies that appeared on his table. In fact, clothes rationing gets more mention than food, but Channon is reasured that his own wardrobe is enormous. He can even kit out Field Marshall Wavell in civvies when that old soldier is appointed as Viceroy – an appointment Channon congratulates himself on arranging, although it is also clear from the book that Churchill had little time for Chips so there may have been other factors in play.
This section of the diaries also shows up Channon's high-intensity approach to frendships – he does much for his friends but often gets fed up with them or on occasion turns into their enemy, spreading malicious rumours everywhere – a trait he deplores in others.
The distintegration of Channon's marriage to the ill-named Lady Honor is catalogued in detail; we are left in no doubt that it is all her fault. Channon's own many amours, mostly with men, are not presented as relevant to the situation. This is perhaps the one area of his life where Channon was perhaps in denial, compared with his self-awareness about his social attitudes.
Overall, this is compulsive reading for those who are interested. Those who are not probably gave up half way through Volume 1 in any case.

This first volume of the virtually complete diaries is a considerable expansion of the expurgarted version published many years ago. It chronicles in enormous detail Channon's social ascent first in France and then more significantly in England to 1938. His comments on all those around him (and he knew virtually everyone in 'smart' society in 'thirties England) are perceptive and frank. He himself does not always come out too well, as he makes little effort to hide his faults, both those he would have acknowledged at the time and also those which now seem more reprehensible than would have been the case then. Although thrilled to be in politics at a junior level, his political perceptions were often inaccurate and too much swayed by his tendency to idolise certain people. The diaries are also fascinating for the view they give of sexual relations at that level of society, which both straight and gay, were far more free than in other levels.
Some endearing quirks shine through: his inability to get anyone's age right (corrected in the manifold footnotes); his revulsion for his own countrymen; his frank love of money and the 'bibelots' he bought so often. His energy must have been prodigious, so hectic was his life, even if his actual contribution to the good of society as a whole was almost nil.

I bought this on the basis of some excellent press reviews, despite some hesitation about the likely attitude and comments by the diarist. In fact I found it unexpectedly fascinating. Channon had a social and financial background so different from mine, and moved in such totally different social and political circles, that it read almost like science fiction!
Nevertheless, I was sufficiently intrigued by his account of politics in the pre-war years to buy the second volume.
Frankly bisexual as well as a far rightwing enthusiast, his comments on individuals were sometimes extremely frank, sexually as well as politically, and I can see why publication of this (almost) unexpurgated volume was delayed.

I noticed that reviewers had radically different attitudes to the editor's voluminous biographical footnotes, but on balance I found them useful. If you don't, just ignore them.

Henry Channon was one of those people in British politics who was everywhere yet did little. Born to an Anglo-American family, a visit to London during the First World Ear awakened a lifelong Anglophilia that he slaked by moving to England and assiduously worked his way up the social ladder. Marriage to the Guinness family gave his entrée into politics via a safe seat in Parliament, where he sat from 1935 until his early death in 1958.

Apart from a three-year period as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office Channon spent his career in the House of commons as a back-bencher. Yet his name looms larger today than that of many of his office-holding contemporaries thanks to his diaries. Kept intermittently from 1918 until 1954, they are a chronicle of a wealthy and socially-connected politician who dined with royalty and served alongside giants. The text drips with names from the era’s social register and from the highest reaches of British politics, all of which Channon lovingly recorded as evidence of his status both at Westminster and in London society.

What makes his diaries so readable, though, is Channon's eye for the telling detail and his ear for the revealing anecdote. Thanks to them the reader gets a series of glimpses into British politics and high society in the 1930s and 1940s, all of which are amusingly if snobbishly recounted. Through them we also get a sense of Channon himself: an ambitious figure who never reached the heights he thought himself capable of attaining. While he may never have become the political figure he hoped he would be, his diaries are in themselves an achievement which we can treasure. Even in their heavily expurgated form they are among the best eyewitness accounts of the era, and while Simon Heffer's forthcoming edition promises a more comprehensive sampling of entries he will be hard pressed to improve upon Robert Rhodes James's excellent introduction to Channon's life.½

The positives are in the observations, some very close, some detached, of 1930s and 1940s British politics. The fact that the diaries were edited with a heavy hand is a negative, and Channon’s snobbery and social climbing can be hard to take.½

The rating reflects on the diary NOT the person, he was a snob and highly privileged, white, male with no redeeming qualities at all, except for his love of his son. The editing seems to be reasonably well done.½

Intriguing diaries of American turned Englishman Chips Channon, whose social and political life in the 1930s and 1940s is catalogued in these expurgated but still important diaries. Enjoyable to read. Much material on the Abdication and the run-up to WWII. The full diaries will be available in a few years' time, hopefully.