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

Chips Channon's diaries provide a vivid account of his life, including his time as a Conservative MP and his observations of London society and the abdication crisis. They are elegant, gossipy, and bitchy, offering a unique insight into a bygone era.

Format: Hardback
Length: 1024 pages
Publication date: 04 March 2021
Publisher: Cornerstone

Chips Channon, born in Chicago in 1897, settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable, but his diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy, and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and knew everybody. Whether describing the antics of London society in the interwar years, the growing scandal surrounding his close friends Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson during the abdication crisis, or the mood in the House of Commons in the lead-up to the Munich crisis, his sense of drama and his eye for the telling detail are unmatched. These diaries bring a whole epoch vividly to life.

A heavily abridged and censored edition of the diaries was published in 1967. Only now, sixty years after Chips' death, can an extensive text be shared. Chips perfectly embodied the qualities vital to the task: a capacious ear for gossip, a neat turn of phrase, a waspish desire to tell all, and easy access to the highest social circles across Europe. Blending Woosterish antics with a Lady Bracknellesque capacity for acid comment, replete with fascinating insights.

Jesse Norman, Financial Times

Weight: 1746g
Dimension: 174 x 248 x 68 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781786331816