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Henry 'Chips' Channon: The Diaries #3
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 3): 1943-57
This third and final volume of the unexpurgated diaries of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon begins as the Second World War is turning in the Allies' favour. It ends with Chips descending into poor health but still able to turn a pointed phrase about the political events that swirl around him and the great and the good with whom he mingles.
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.
He has been described as 'The greatest British diarist of the 20th century'. This final volume fully justifies that accolade.
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.
He has been described as 'The greatest British diarist of the 20th century'. This final volume fully justifies that accolade.
- GenresHistoryDiaryNonfiction
1161 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 8, 2022
37 people are currently reading
108 people want to read
About the author
Henry Channon
11 books12 followersHe was educated in the United States and France and served in Europe with the American Red Cross during the First World War.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 16, 2023
For close to 3 months, I've lived in close proximity to 'Chips' Channon, the people and places of his time and social milieu. Indeed, it has been a far-ranging journey that I have enjoyed.
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).
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.
In one of the numerous reviews I've read about HENRY 'CHIPS' CHANNON: The Diaries 1943-57, Channon is described as "the Samuel Pepys of his time." I would fully concur with that. As a reader, one becomes absorbed in the life of a man who prematurely ages and goes into a slow and steady decline (from the early 1950s) that ends with Channon's death at 61 in October 1958.
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).
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.
In one of the numerous reviews I've read about HENRY 'CHIPS' CHANNON: The Diaries 1943-57, Channon is described as "the Samuel Pepys of his time." I would fully concur with that. As a reader, one becomes absorbed in the life of a man who prematurely ages and goes into a slow and steady decline (from the early 1950s) that ends with Channon's death at 61 in October 1958.
December 31, 2023
I finally finished - been working on this for months. (I checked it out from the library, as an ebook, and I kept having to return it). I read all three diaries - 3,040 pages - and I think that’s an achievement of some sort. Chips Channon’s diaries are NOT for the faint of heart or those easily offended. Even for the casual anti-semitism and racism of his time (1897-1958, although the diaries cover the late teens and some of the 1920s, most of the 1930s, and all of the 40s and 50s until his death), Channon was writing things in his diary that were really beyond the pale. When and if you read these diaries, be sure and read the Foreward, written by his granddaughter, which puts into words why these diaries, with their terrible warts, are worth your time. She, also, found much of what he said despicable. “I have experienced conflicting emotions about their dairies,” she writes. “Chips was no saint and there are things I have learnt about him that I wish I hadn’t.” It’s not always easy to read. But personally, it was also fascinating. This last volume especially was a window in to the life of a queer person from the past, for the most part honest (certainly more than the previous two volumes) about Channon’s queer life - the love for his “companion” Peter Coats (who he calls Bunny), his passionate affair with playwright Terrence Rattigan, his many dalliances on the side (including his ex-brother-in-law and Prince Paul of Yugoslavia). If you enjoying reading about the Royal Family (or watching The Crown , his inside baseball knowledge (he was besties with Princess Marina, QE2’s aunt) of the the Windsors is fascinating AND catty. He is scathing about the Bowes-Lyon clan, including and especially the Queen Mother (although in his first volume he wanted to marry her) and is hilariously shady about Princess Margaret, who he refers to as “a minx” at least twice (his circle, again some inside knowledge from Princess Marina, referred to the queen and her sister as “Lilibet and Liliput”). It’s obvious that Marina - and probably Prince Paul, who was married to Marina’s sister Olga, were feeding information to Channon about the royal family, particularly about the Townsend affair, but also other tidbits. If you aren’t a fan of royal gossip, or interested in queer life in the 1940s and 1950s, Channon was VERY political, and wrote about and knew all of the political figures of his time. I appreciate that Simon Heffer (and the Channon Family) chose to leave in everything that Channon wrote (excepting some names of people who were still, amazingly alive, few and far between); the full picture of a man is far more interesting than one with all the bad apples picked out. He is not especially likable, but his life, at least for me, was fascinating. So glad I read all three diaries.
November 3, 2022
Another phenomenal editing from Heffer. All three masterpieces.
The diaries could be almost a spoof with the amount of sex, spending and sordidness that goes on! It’s unbelievable reading, in parts.
Something to always refer back to as is truly a history of our time!
The diaries could be almost a spoof with the amount of sex, spending and sordidness that goes on! It’s unbelievable reading, in parts.
Something to always refer back to as is truly a history of our time!
February 6, 2025
The final volume of Chips Channon's diaries. This volume is a bit less interesting than the previous ones because although Channon remains a member of parliament until his death, he is not in the political inner circle and barely mentions key political events from the 1950s such as the Suez crisis. In previous volumes, Channon was a close friend of Edward VIII during the Abdication Crisis and was a political insider during the outbreak of the Second World War. In the final volume, he mostly socializes with minor royalty from across Europe and celebrities from theatre and film. Some of these anecdotes are entertaining and prescient - he is one of the first people to predict that Princess Elizabeth will marry Prince Philip for example - but his outsider status compared to the first two volumes means that he underestimates the popularity of Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and is overly optimistic about the restoration of numerous deposed European monarchies. To the end of his life, Channon remains an unrepentant snob and bigot, stating that he is bored by the poor and disgusted by the middle classes. Would have been nice if he had experienced a little more character development after living through the Second World War! The audiobook narration is excellent and the diaries in this volume bring high society in the 1940s and 1950s to life. Despite their shortcomings, these diaries are valuable historical source.
February 23, 2024
Five stars with the proviso that the truly fastidious may wish to keep a very large bottle of Lysol nearby. I have read all three volumes. That is a lot of Chips.
When I reviewed the first volume I mentioned what a bad idea it is to have your editor be someone who clearly dislikes you. Once again, Simon Heffer's footnotes are at least as entertaining as anything Channon writes. More, because you don't think that Heffer --- unlike dear Chips --- is helping bring on a World War through his work.
I have some thoughts, so this review will also be posted for Volume Three.
As a Tory member of Parliament for most of his life, Channon worked behind the scenes. That is a polite way of saying his career never advanced past glorified flunky because no one in his right mind trusted him. Chips knew everybody important, although he was only truly comfortable with women who wore tiaras and minor Yugoslavian royalty. Channon was almost dead (1958) by the time he received a coveted knighthood. The reader knows it was coveted because by the time the last volume rolls around Channon mentions how much he longs to be in the House of Lords on what feels like every other page. He is also married to Honor Guinness (yes, thoseGuinnesses) at least for the beginning of Volume Two. However, Chips doesn't limit himself to one side of the street. He has affairs with men throughout the period 1938-1958, and at least two long-term relationships that well outlast his marriage. It is an indication of Channon's character that he doesn't want to divorce Honor because 1) all that Guinness money might go away. It doesn't because Honor was such a pill that the Guinness family tended to blame her for deserting Channon without close investigation as to why she spent so much time skiing alone during their marital years. They have a child, Paul, whom Chips persists in calling his "Dauphin" and whom Honor ignores before marrying again, this time to an auto mechanic, which is a long way to go to make a point. Meanwhile, Chips is simultaneously canoodling with the aide-de-camp to the Viceroy of India and Terence Rattigan, with strong hints of one-night stands with Noel Coward and Ivor Novello. Chips got around.
The chief horror of these absolutely insufferable, indispensable diaries for students of the period is that Chips is wrong about everything. He worshiped Neville Chamberlain, and Channon goes to his grave still thinking that World War II was a disaster. The reader can be forgiven for thinking Chips means it was a disaster for Chips alone as he throws off nonstop bitchy remarks about Jews, the Queen Mothe, Nancy Astor, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Alfred Duff Cooper, the French, the Americans (Chips is perpetually unhappy because he is originally from Chicago), his parents, the Guinnesses, the King, the Duke of Kent, Clement Attlee, people of color, you name it. He is misogynistic and weirdly homophobic given his own circumstances, but consistency is not Channon's long suite save for being wrong about every single blessed political issue in his lifetime. And this was all in the House of Commons, the governing heart of the British Empire. Men and women died because of the ineptitude of Chamberlain and his people. Chamberlain died before the full horrors of the Nazi regime became obvious at the end of the war, but Channon has no excuse. He is indeed proud of the fact that he thinks the Jews "asked" for it.
Channon's UK narrowly avoids destruction by 1945, but struggles to recover. The Empire is gone by Channon's death, and he makes no secret of the fact that this outcome means the war wasn't worth it. It is an indication of Channon's truncated world view that he cannot see that the Empire was unsustainable. But his only real concerns are his Dauphin, his 18th century dining room in London, his country estate, how young he still looks and whether he is invited to the best parties. Meanwhile, entire cities are being bombed out of existence and the imperial troops are engaged all over the map trying to stop the Nazis (Channon doesn't care about the Japanese unless they invade India and put his friend into harm's way). At the end of the war the exhausted country tried to come to grips with its losses and unavoidably diminished world power status. Chips is merely happy that he can take his son to Germany and introduce him to German aristocrats.
The diaries are the residue of an awful human being, but are as necessary for an understanding of the decline and fall of the British Empire as the duc de Saint-Simon's are for the court of Louis XIV. And all three volumes are impeccably edited by Heffer.
When I reviewed the first volume I mentioned what a bad idea it is to have your editor be someone who clearly dislikes you. Once again, Simon Heffer's footnotes are at least as entertaining as anything Channon writes. More, because you don't think that Heffer --- unlike dear Chips --- is helping bring on a World War through his work.
I have some thoughts, so this review will also be posted for Volume Three.
As a Tory member of Parliament for most of his life, Channon worked behind the scenes. That is a polite way of saying his career never advanced past glorified flunky because no one in his right mind trusted him. Chips knew everybody important, although he was only truly comfortable with women who wore tiaras and minor Yugoslavian royalty. Channon was almost dead (1958) by the time he received a coveted knighthood. The reader knows it was coveted because by the time the last volume rolls around Channon mentions how much he longs to be in the House of Lords on what feels like every other page. He is also married to Honor Guinness (yes, thoseGuinnesses) at least for the beginning of Volume Two. However, Chips doesn't limit himself to one side of the street. He has affairs with men throughout the period 1938-1958, and at least two long-term relationships that well outlast his marriage. It is an indication of Channon's character that he doesn't want to divorce Honor because 1) all that Guinness money might go away. It doesn't because Honor was such a pill that the Guinness family tended to blame her for deserting Channon without close investigation as to why she spent so much time skiing alone during their marital years. They have a child, Paul, whom Chips persists in calling his "Dauphin" and whom Honor ignores before marrying again, this time to an auto mechanic, which is a long way to go to make a point. Meanwhile, Chips is simultaneously canoodling with the aide-de-camp to the Viceroy of India and Terence Rattigan, with strong hints of one-night stands with Noel Coward and Ivor Novello. Chips got around.
The chief horror of these absolutely insufferable, indispensable diaries for students of the period is that Chips is wrong about everything. He worshiped Neville Chamberlain, and Channon goes to his grave still thinking that World War II was a disaster. The reader can be forgiven for thinking Chips means it was a disaster for Chips alone as he throws off nonstop bitchy remarks about Jews, the Queen Mothe, Nancy Astor, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Alfred Duff Cooper, the French, the Americans (Chips is perpetually unhappy because he is originally from Chicago), his parents, the Guinnesses, the King, the Duke of Kent, Clement Attlee, people of color, you name it. He is misogynistic and weirdly homophobic given his own circumstances, but consistency is not Channon's long suite save for being wrong about every single blessed political issue in his lifetime. And this was all in the House of Commons, the governing heart of the British Empire. Men and women died because of the ineptitude of Chamberlain and his people. Chamberlain died before the full horrors of the Nazi regime became obvious at the end of the war, but Channon has no excuse. He is indeed proud of the fact that he thinks the Jews "asked" for it.
Channon's UK narrowly avoids destruction by 1945, but struggles to recover. The Empire is gone by Channon's death, and he makes no secret of the fact that this outcome means the war wasn't worth it. It is an indication of Channon's truncated world view that he cannot see that the Empire was unsustainable. But his only real concerns are his Dauphin, his 18th century dining room in London, his country estate, how young he still looks and whether he is invited to the best parties. Meanwhile, entire cities are being bombed out of existence and the imperial troops are engaged all over the map trying to stop the Nazis (Channon doesn't care about the Japanese unless they invade India and put his friend into harm's way). At the end of the war the exhausted country tried to come to grips with its losses and unavoidably diminished world power status. Chips is merely happy that he can take his son to Germany and introduce him to German aristocrats.
The diaries are the residue of an awful human being, but are as necessary for an understanding of the decline and fall of the British Empire as the duc de Saint-Simon's are for the court of Louis XIV. And all three volumes are impeccably edited by Heffer.
April 2, 2025
A great diarist. But it’s the lives he crossed and describes, and not his that really interest us today.
I have now listened to 140hrs of ‘Chips’ diaries, and can’t imagine that there are many people I know as well.
This last of 3 volumes fades out rather, as Chips himself has lost some of the close proximity he once enjoyed with British and European power and privilege (though he resolutely declares the opposite towards the end of the vol)!
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.
He was a century behind even in the changing mid to late 20c, sometimes even two! His erudite observations on those who wielded power and privilege are probably more reliable than many others, though his views on political policy and the unfolding sweep of history are absurd now and were not much less so as he wrote them.
Myopic and prejudiced, ignorant and blinkered, his world was narrow and shrank even more so as he aged.
Had he put his potentially excellent brain to real use he may have grown and become a real political player, but he was a dilettante, only an MP because of the adjacent life it afforded him, and because in those days, it was still possible to treat being an MP as a gentleman’s pastime. 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.
In this volume hé ages quickly and before his time, and perhaps it is the old story of a good brain with too little to occupy it. He becomes bored of the life he had pursued with such vigour (society, ‘Royalties’, jewels and bibelot) and but for a diversion into the theatre and its habitués as a result of his affair with Terence Rattigan, his story becomes ever more confined to a smaller coterie of people, many of whom he seems far leas interested in than the grand dames of his youth.
He loves beauty in places, people and things, and his insights on the persecution of gay men in the 1950s is enlightening and depressing at the same time.
He stays loyal on the whole even where his diaries describe his weakening love for his so called intimates, and his love for his son and Peter Coates seem constant.
But his interest in the affairs of State trickles away just as it should have been reignited (by the Suez Crisis) and that he does not record this in any detail makes the last of these volumes a bit of a damp squib compared to he chronicles of the 1930s and WW2.
The world is so different now that 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!
I shall miss his ‘voice’ despite everything, and that of Tom Ward equally. Without doubt Ward 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.
Goodbye (Mr) Chips, how I should love now to read a biography of him.
But nothing of real value exists… yet. I would like much more insight into his background, and how he was viewed by the many people he encountered in his immediately useless but ultimately (through these diaries) valuable life.
I have now listened to 140hrs of ‘Chips’ diaries, and can’t imagine that there are many people I know as well.
This last of 3 volumes fades out rather, as Chips himself has lost some of the close proximity he once enjoyed with British and European power and privilege (though he resolutely declares the opposite towards the end of the vol)!
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.
He was a century behind even in the changing mid to late 20c, sometimes even two! His erudite observations on those who wielded power and privilege are probably more reliable than many others, though his views on political policy and the unfolding sweep of history are absurd now and were not much less so as he wrote them.
Myopic and prejudiced, ignorant and blinkered, his world was narrow and shrank even more so as he aged.
Had he put his potentially excellent brain to real use he may have grown and become a real political player, but he was a dilettante, only an MP because of the adjacent life it afforded him, and because in those days, it was still possible to treat being an MP as a gentleman’s pastime. 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.
In this volume hé ages quickly and before his time, and perhaps it is the old story of a good brain with too little to occupy it. He becomes bored of the life he had pursued with such vigour (society, ‘Royalties’, jewels and bibelot) and but for a diversion into the theatre and its habitués as a result of his affair with Terence Rattigan, his story becomes ever more confined to a smaller coterie of people, many of whom he seems far leas interested in than the grand dames of his youth.
He loves beauty in places, people and things, and his insights on the persecution of gay men in the 1950s is enlightening and depressing at the same time.
He stays loyal on the whole even where his diaries describe his weakening love for his so called intimates, and his love for his son and Peter Coates seem constant.
But his interest in the affairs of State trickles away just as it should have been reignited (by the Suez Crisis) and that he does not record this in any detail makes the last of these volumes a bit of a damp squib compared to he chronicles of the 1930s and WW2.
The world is so different now that 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!
I shall miss his ‘voice’ despite everything, and that of Tom Ward equally. Without doubt Ward 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.
Goodbye (Mr) Chips, how I should love now to read a biography of him.
But nothing of real value exists… yet. I would like much more insight into his background, and how he was viewed by the many people he encountered in his immediately useless but ultimately (through these diaries) valuable life.
February 16, 2025
So I have like many others lived with Chips for the last month or so. And listened to all three volumes of these rather fantastic diaries. Channon is alot of things, a snob, a royal fanboy, a dandy, a great Father, kind and a good good friend. He lived a very full and glamorous life as decribed by other reviewers. He was also a complicated man who was most certainly gay he was no political genius. He was however the most wonderful social fixer who had a genius for brining people together and as he explains his life was one of wining and dinning and to be honest I am not suprised he died when he did .... the drinking, partying, smoking and lifestyle would kill one.
As many others have said Channon had affairs and sex, he cheated on his partner and indeed on his wife who I think we can all agree he only marrried for her money. But one thing we can all agree on was his love for his son who he spoke of honestly and with feeling. His long and loving friendship with Paul of Serbia is very real as is his strange but quite mading love of his ex brother in law Alan Lenox Boyd. He loves deeply, he also falls in and out of love quite hard, George Gage and Terrance Rattigan being an example. His total dislike and uncare of his parnets but wanting and needing their money is disturbing.
Other people have and will write better reviews of the Diarys of Chips I will only say this I have loved all three volumes and in the end I found myself liking him. I will miss Chips and I advise anyone else who has any intrest in Diaries, History and this period in history to read or listen to them. Goodbye Chips thanks for the ride give my regards to Mrs Astor.
As many others have said Channon had affairs and sex, he cheated on his partner and indeed on his wife who I think we can all agree he only marrried for her money. But one thing we can all agree on was his love for his son who he spoke of honestly and with feeling. His long and loving friendship with Paul of Serbia is very real as is his strange but quite mading love of his ex brother in law Alan Lenox Boyd. He loves deeply, he also falls in and out of love quite hard, George Gage and Terrance Rattigan being an example. His total dislike and uncare of his parnets but wanting and needing their money is disturbing.
Other people have and will write better reviews of the Diarys of Chips I will only say this I have loved all three volumes and in the end I found myself liking him. I will miss Chips and I advise anyone else who has any intrest in Diaries, History and this period in history to read or listen to them. Goodbye Chips thanks for the ride give my regards to Mrs Astor.
July 19, 2023
The third volume of the Channon diaries concludes the publication of all the surviving diaries that have come down to us, and as with the previous two volumes, it is a hernia-inducing doorstopper of a book. Chips really did see fit to include just about everything that he did to his diary and by 1943, with Channon’s ministerial career over, an awful lot of what went on involved Channon lounging in bed making long telephone calls to various people to snipe about others and to plan his social life. The war still had two years to run, but hardly impinged on Channon or his set, so there are not many references to world events in this volume.
Instead, we are treated to a series of engaging vignettes involving Channon and any number of his homosexual fellows getting it on as the young people say. In the previous volumes, Channon often seemed to want to do little more than allow women to see him naked and dream about young men, but by 1943 he had settled down as an inverted Samuel Pepys and gives us chapter and verse on his sexual life.
Peter Coates, (“Petticoats”) who we were introduced to in the second volume of the diaries was still Channon’s great love, but as he was in India with the army that left Chips with plenty of free time to play the field. The House of Commons according to Chips comes over as a sort of glorified molly house and Channon was quite happy to bed members from both sides. Thus he had a fling with Labour’s Raymond Blackburn, an alcoholic who would later be imprisoned for fraud and who ended his days as an assistant to Lord Longford in the latter’s entertaining anti-porn campaign. Nigel Davies was a Tory MP who was also being bedded by Selwyn Lloyd, a future foreign secretary who ended up as Speaker of the Commons. That did not stop him from finding the time to have a foursome with Chips, the playwright Terrence Rattigan and Lord Montague of Beaulieu.
There seems to have been enough in parliament to keep any homosexual happy, but Chips had the energy to look beyond it and enjoyed a four-year fling with a corporal in the Life Guards, until the soldier married a woman named Brenda in 1955. One likes to think that the money that Chips had paid him gave the happy couple a good start to their new life.
To be fair, Channon was generous to all his bedmates, especially Rattigan who took over from Peter Coates as Channon’s special toy whilst Petticoats was away on military service. When Channon’s mother died and her final legacy of just over £1,000 arrived in Chips’ account, he decided to spend most of the money on a gift to Rattigan. Channon loathed his mother and since his comfortable income came from his divorce settlement his wife’s family paid him he could certainly afford to spend the legacy on this literary rentboy.
Channon’s waspish comments about the people around him are much in evidence in this volume. Upon seeing the images of starved corpses of concentration camp victims he wrote: “The rows of dead emaciated bodies all looked like Margot Asquith naked!” However, he was still at the end of his life as incapable of predicting the future as he always had been. Thus, in 1952, he predicted that “The new Queen is determined, humourless, serious and will be a success but not loved – after her youth and novelty wear off.” To put it mildly, he got that one wrong as the crowds at the royal funeral demonstrated in 2022.
He wasn’t too keen on the rest of the Royal Family, either. Chips avoided the Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend affair, “as I don’t like either of them.” He blamed it on the “fat Queen Mother” for being too lazy to stop the affair from becoming a public scandal, and fulminated that Margaret was “a silly, selfish, ill-mannered sensationalist,” Townsend he dismissed with his greatest insult of being “middle-class.”
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.
We read Channon for his descriptions of events, with his irascible comments just the icing on the cake. Thus, at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, we learn that the four garter knights carrying the Queen’s canopy managed to bungle the operation and that Lady Carnock “was so drunk that she had to be removed forcibly from the abbey.” For his part, Channon nipped outside several times during the service onto the parapet for a cigarette and a chat with others who were having their own smoke breaks out there.
It is a pity that Channon only commented on events that he was directly involved in, so there is no analysis of the Suez Crisis of 1956. Simon Heffer thinks that this may be due to the fact that Channon was in the last year of his life, but it strikes me as being more likely that he just didn’t care because he wasn’t at the centre.
Nevertheless, he is a great chronicler of events during the first half of the last century. Even his failure to understand them gives us an insight into how men of his time and class thought; thus he gives us a window into the world of the upper-class Tory grandee, still at the height of his power. As an individual, I suspect that an evening with Channon would be an engaging night to remember as like many an old queen he comes over as a gossip-hound of note.
It is to be hoped that a single volume of the Channon diaries will be produced. This smaller portion of Chips is needed for the general reader who may not wish to plod through endless accounts of conversations with titled people and minor royalty. However, for the serious student of Britain in the inter-war and post-war period, these three volumes taken together are an essential primary source.
( An edited version of this review first appeared in The Brazen Head, an online political and literary quarterly. https://brazen-head.org/)
Instead, we are treated to a series of engaging vignettes involving Channon and any number of his homosexual fellows getting it on as the young people say. In the previous volumes, Channon often seemed to want to do little more than allow women to see him naked and dream about young men, but by 1943 he had settled down as an inverted Samuel Pepys and gives us chapter and verse on his sexual life.
Peter Coates, (“Petticoats”) who we were introduced to in the second volume of the diaries was still Channon’s great love, but as he was in India with the army that left Chips with plenty of free time to play the field. The House of Commons according to Chips comes over as a sort of glorified molly house and Channon was quite happy to bed members from both sides. Thus he had a fling with Labour’s Raymond Blackburn, an alcoholic who would later be imprisoned for fraud and who ended his days as an assistant to Lord Longford in the latter’s entertaining anti-porn campaign. Nigel Davies was a Tory MP who was also being bedded by Selwyn Lloyd, a future foreign secretary who ended up as Speaker of the Commons. That did not stop him from finding the time to have a foursome with Chips, the playwright Terrence Rattigan and Lord Montague of Beaulieu.
There seems to have been enough in parliament to keep any homosexual happy, but Chips had the energy to look beyond it and enjoyed a four-year fling with a corporal in the Life Guards, until the soldier married a woman named Brenda in 1955. One likes to think that the money that Chips had paid him gave the happy couple a good start to their new life.
To be fair, Channon was generous to all his bedmates, especially Rattigan who took over from Peter Coates as Channon’s special toy whilst Petticoats was away on military service. When Channon’s mother died and her final legacy of just over £1,000 arrived in Chips’ account, he decided to spend most of the money on a gift to Rattigan. Channon loathed his mother and since his comfortable income came from his divorce settlement his wife’s family paid him he could certainly afford to spend the legacy on this literary rentboy.
Channon’s waspish comments about the people around him are much in evidence in this volume. Upon seeing the images of starved corpses of concentration camp victims he wrote: “The rows of dead emaciated bodies all looked like Margot Asquith naked!” However, he was still at the end of his life as incapable of predicting the future as he always had been. Thus, in 1952, he predicted that “The new Queen is determined, humourless, serious and will be a success but not loved – after her youth and novelty wear off.” To put it mildly, he got that one wrong as the crowds at the royal funeral demonstrated in 2022.
He wasn’t too keen on the rest of the Royal Family, either. Chips avoided the Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend affair, “as I don’t like either of them.” He blamed it on the “fat Queen Mother” for being too lazy to stop the affair from becoming a public scandal, and fulminated that Margaret was “a silly, selfish, ill-mannered sensationalist,” Townsend he dismissed with his greatest insult of being “middle-class.”
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.
We read Channon for his descriptions of events, with his irascible comments just the icing on the cake. Thus, at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, we learn that the four garter knights carrying the Queen’s canopy managed to bungle the operation and that Lady Carnock “was so drunk that she had to be removed forcibly from the abbey.” For his part, Channon nipped outside several times during the service onto the parapet for a cigarette and a chat with others who were having their own smoke breaks out there.
It is a pity that Channon only commented on events that he was directly involved in, so there is no analysis of the Suez Crisis of 1956. Simon Heffer thinks that this may be due to the fact that Channon was in the last year of his life, but it strikes me as being more likely that he just didn’t care because he wasn’t at the centre.
Nevertheless, he is a great chronicler of events during the first half of the last century. Even his failure to understand them gives us an insight into how men of his time and class thought; thus he gives us a window into the world of the upper-class Tory grandee, still at the height of his power. As an individual, I suspect that an evening with Channon would be an engaging night to remember as like many an old queen he comes over as a gossip-hound of note.
It is to be hoped that a single volume of the Channon diaries will be produced. This smaller portion of Chips is needed for the general reader who may not wish to plod through endless accounts of conversations with titled people and minor royalty. However, for the serious student of Britain in the inter-war and post-war period, these three volumes taken together are an essential primary source.
( An edited version of this review first appeared in The Brazen Head, an online political and literary quarterly. https://brazen-head.org/)
February 16, 2024
I put Channon in the same category as the late Sir Harry Flashman. Two truly awful people who had the capacity to shed light on various periods in time. The diaries make good reading because Channon, like Alan Clark, never pretends to be a pleasant person - he is quite happy to make devastating judgements on himself as well as others. He was besotted with both Peter Coats and Terence Rattigan - both interesting characters - and the juggling of the two lovers has a sort of comic tension.
The British class system still has the power to interest people throughout the world, viz Downton, Titanic, Monty Python, Princess Di and the rest . So if you are interested in the comings and goings of the top table, this book is for you. A bizarre amalgam of Burke's Peerage and the Kama Sutra.
The British class system still has the power to interest people throughout the world, viz Downton, Titanic, Monty Python, Princess Di and the rest . So if you are interested in the comings and goings of the top table, this book is for you. A bizarre amalgam of Burke's Peerage and the Kama Sutra.
June 30, 2023
How do you begin to sum up Chips Channon. Like his hilarious descriptions of those he encountered, which were often contrary, (“limited but not without charm”) he was a contradiction of sheer snobbish selfishness, and yet had warmth and sentiment. I particularly liked his humility when observing and commenting on Churchill, who actually made him nervous when in his approximate company rendering him semi speechless!
Princess Margaret comes in for particular criticism which is very interesting with hindsight. Huge read over 3 volumes but glad I did read it all. Very sad at the end of his life because he always seemed convinced he would out-live everyone into very old age.
Princess Margaret comes in for particular criticism which is very interesting with hindsight. Huge read over 3 volumes but glad I did read it all. Very sad at the end of his life because he always seemed convinced he would out-live everyone into very old age.
April 16, 2023
I have lived along with this final volume for several weeks if not months, growing ever more disillusioned and indeed exasperated with the character of Chips Channon and his personal and political environment. As a historical document, the book is an invaluable resource and Simon Heffer is to be thanked for his dedicated work - so also are the grandchildren for entrusting so egregious a record of a close ancestor to posterity.
February 26, 2025
After so many months listening to Chips's diaries on and off I will definitely miss it! As he admits himself he has no morals but he certainly led an interesting life. His choice of descriptive words about people were very amusing even if I didn't know who many of the people were.
March 8, 2023
Fascinating Read
I relished every word of Chip’s diary as edited by Rhodes. But the three volume edition is much above the first version.
I relished every word of Chip’s diary as edited by Rhodes. But the three volume edition is much above the first version.
May 4, 2025
I’ve never been the biggest supporter of the Conservative Party, but found certain aspects potentially attractive. As a snobbish, garrulous, socially upper-classed individual, Henry ‘Chips’ Channon represented none of those areas.
At the start of his diaries, Channon’s diaries focused somewhat on politics (unsurprising, for a politician). He couldn’t come to a conclusion decision if he had a gun to his head, but he was clearly involved in things (albeit somewhat peripherally). By this book, he had given up all pretence of being an active politician, and was more focused on his social life.
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.
Simon Heffer justifies some of this by saying he was ill pretty regularly towards the end of the book. He was, however, well enough to socialise with royalty throughout this period.
So all in all, I’m left feeling underwhelmed by this book, which too a while to read, as a consequence.
At the start of his diaries, Channon’s diaries focused somewhat on politics (unsurprising, for a politician). He couldn’t come to a conclusion decision if he had a gun to his head, but he was clearly involved in things (albeit somewhat peripherally). By this book, he had given up all pretence of being an active politician, and was more focused on his social life.
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.
Simon Heffer justifies some of this by saying he was ill pretty regularly towards the end of the book. He was, however, well enough to socialise with royalty throughout this period.
So all in all, I’m left feeling underwhelmed by this book, which too a while to read, as a consequence.
October 27, 2025
7th Sep - 27th Oct 2025
A 7 week Chips Channon Marathon - all 3 volumes together. What a journey. He was always amusing, but you can't help think that his was a shallow life. Apart from his minimal work as an MP his time was spent frivolously and his lack of morals and fidelity and casual racism more than jarred. His redeeming feature was his love for his friends and son. I wonder though whether they were true friends in the sense I understand today. I don't understand the motivations of the society he moved in. Does anyone live this lifestyle now, maybe in somewhere like Monaco?
The final epic installment of his diary; he led a fascinating life. It seems far removed from our own. That generation/social milieu have a loose understanding of fidelity.
A 7 week Chips Channon Marathon - all 3 volumes together. What a journey. He was always amusing, but you can't help think that his was a shallow life. Apart from his minimal work as an MP his time was spent frivolously and his lack of morals and fidelity and casual racism more than jarred. His redeeming feature was his love for his friends and son. I wonder though whether they were true friends in the sense I understand today. I don't understand the motivations of the society he moved in. Does anyone live this lifestyle now, maybe in somewhere like Monaco?
The final epic installment of his diary; he led a fascinating life. It seems far removed from our own. That generation/social milieu have a loose understanding of fidelity.
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