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Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 3): 1943-57
- Author
- Chips Channon
- Narrator
- Tom Ward
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 24 November 2022
- Run Time
- 48 hours 17 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Diaries, letters and journals, Autobiography: historical, political and military, Social and cultural history
- Rating
- 4.0 (1 review)
What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
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 a prematurely aged Chips descending into poor health but still socially active and 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. Separated and then divorced from his wife Honor, he conducts passionate relationships with a young officer on Wavell's staff and with the playwright Terence Rattigan, while being serially unfaithful to both. The one constant in his life is his son, Paul, whom he adores.
Through Chips's friendship with Rattigan 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. At the same time we continue to experience vicariously a seemingly endless social round of grand parties and receptions at which Chips might well rub shoulders with Lady Diana Cooper, or Cecil Beaton, or the Mountbattens, or any number of dethroned European monarchs. Those unfortunate enough to die while the pen is in Chips's hand are frequently captured in less than flattering epigrammatic obituaries. The Archbishop of Canterbury was a 'fat fool of 63'. Lloyd George was a 'wicked unscrupulous rogue of charm'. George Bernard Shaw 'died as he lived - very selfishly'. But Chips's gift for friendship and his frequent kindness shine through, too.
He has been described as 'The greatest British diarist of the 20th century'. This final volume fully justifies that accolade.
© Chips Channon 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
Critics Review
-
An utterly addictive glimpse of London high society and politics in the 40s and 50s, superlatively edited by Simon Heffer.
Robert Harris
-
An instant classic. The thing that makes the diary so compelling is [Channon's] ability to characterise the privileged elite of London Society. The diary is his masterpiece, written with freshness and verve . . . In spite of Chips's prejudices and snobbishness, his diaries are quite simply the greatest social and political diaries of the 20th century. The three published volumes, each one 1,000-plus pages long, record a vanished world of privilege, promiscuity and inequality - a vast cast of characters, aristocrats, royalties and American socialites. Simon Heffer has done a marvellous job of editing the manuscript. He identifies everything the reader needs to know, but his notes never get between the reader and the text.
Daily Telegraph
-
Another 1,000-plus pages of Chips Channon's unexpurgated diaries - with barely a dull passage among them, Simon Heffer's editing has been as adroit as the task is monumental, and his stamina as bottomless as his subject's . . . It is never less than diverting.
New Statesman
-
Nothing compares with the unexpurgated Channon diaries. They are rich, exuberant, copious and shatteringly honest. For those interested in the parliamentary politics of 20th-century England, in the conniving and jostling among European traders of influence, in the swansong of aristocratic glamour in Mayfair and Belgravia, in the capering duplicity necessitated by a criminalised sexuality, the diaries are matchless . . . His editor Simon Heffer, who has been deftly aided by Hugo Vickers, deserves a lifetime award for his strenuous efforts in mastering 3,000 pages of text with such precision and nimble wit.
The Spectator
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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[The diaries] have disappointed no one in search of gossip, breathtaking snobbery and prejudice, as well as being a window on the political scene . . . It's the parliamentary picture that is of chief value. Channon was a political lightweight, but his diaries will be a historians' resource for centuries.
Country Life
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Chips writes with such vividness that one feels one is living each day in his exalted company . . . An infectious joie de vivre permeates . . . No reader could not be absorbed by his unorthodox depiction of 1940s London and the following decade.
Oldie
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Magnificently indiscreet . . . No praise is too high for the diaries' editor Simon Heffer . . . Channon excels in descriptions of great parliamentary events . . and other accounts of important occasions, read in their entirety, are profoundly moving . . . What unending joy Channon will bring to his readers through these irresistible records of upper-class life in a vanished Britain.
The House magazine
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Scrupulous . . . relieved by flashes of malicious wit.
Literary Review
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Chips Channon is irresistibly entertaining company - at any rate in print . . . All in all, a pretty disgraceful life that is a guilty pleasure to read about.
Spectator
-
Reading Chips is a mesmerising experience. The diaries give a riveting account of politics and society in Britain from the 1920s through to the 1950s. Snobbish and judgmental, Channon is not a likeable character, but the waspishness is what makes him a great diarist. Heffer is an exemplary editor.
Spectator
User Reviews
Book 4.0
Narration 4.0
-
4.0 4.0
Goodness me, what a snob Chips was. A very tedious sort of life to my mind, endless cocktail parties, dinners, going to the House of Commons for a snooze. If you weren’t royalty then he didn’t want to know. How the other half lived n wartime was eye opening - no sign of shortages of any kind. Amusing when the butler forgot to give him breakfast - but if that was only once he didn’t have much to complain about. I haven’t heard the first 2 volumes; maybe I should. Irritating use of french phrases which tells you the sort of eduction I had! I must just go and dust my bibelots.
CMC 2025-01-26
Details
- Author
- Chips Channon
- Narrator
- Tom Ward
- Duration
- 48 hours 17 minutes
- Release Date
- 24 November 2022
- ISBN
- 9781529190601
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Diaries, letters and journals, Autobiography: historical, political and military, Social and cultural history
- Rating
- 4.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 4.0(1 review)
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.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 a prematurely aged Chips descending into poor health but still socially active and 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. Separated and then divorced from his wife Honor, he conducts passionate relationships with a young officer on Wavell's staff and with the playwright Terence Rattigan, while being serially unfaithful to both. The one constant in his life is his son, Paul, whom he adores.Through Chips's friendship with Rattigan 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. At the same time we continue to experience vicariously a seemingly endless social round of grand parties and receptions at which Chips might well rub shoulders with Lady Diana Cooper, or Cecil Beaton, or the Mountbattens, or any number of dethroned European monarchs. Those unfortunate enough to die while the pen is in Chips's hand are frequently captured in less than flattering epigrammatic obituaries. The Archbishop of Canterbury was a 'fat fool of 63'. Lloyd George was a 'wicked unscrupulous rogue of charm'. George Bernard Shaw 'died as he lived - very selfishly'. But Chips's gift for friendship and his frequent kindness shine through, too.He has been described as 'The greatest British diarist of the 20th century'. This final volume fully justifies that accolade.© Chips Channon 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
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