In 1967, the historian Robert Rhodes James edited a version of the Channon diaries covering 1934 to 1953. As this volume makes clear, he did a spectacularly bad job of it. Insofar as he was even allowed to see the originals rather than heavily redacted copies, Rhodes James bowdlerized the diaries disgracefully, later stating untruthfully in a preface that “the full diaries are not really scandalous and I omitted very little of historical value.” Essential resource on 20th century politics 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.

After George VI's accession Channon's standing in royal circles went from high to low and, as an appeaser, so did his standing in the Conservative party after the failure of appeasement and the appointment of the anti-appeaser Winston Churchill as prime minister. Channon remained loyal to the supplanted Neville Chamberlain, toasting him after his fall as "the King over the Water", and sharing Butler's denigration of Churchill as "a half-breed American". [21] Channon remained a friend of Chamberlain’s widow. Channon's interest in politics waned after this, and he took an increasing interest in the Guinness family brewing interests, though remaining a conscientious and popular constituency MP. [4] London looked a mess today . . . . in the night four Treasury officials were killed when a bomb fell for the second time on that bit of the building immediately adjacent to No. 10 Downing Street. The Germans evidently think that Winston sleeps there. Actually he sleeps in the War Room. His contempt for his father and mother, for Chicago (that “cauldron of horror”), and for America in general lent a special intensity to his identification with old Europe and its labyrinthine upper classes. I wish Heffer had said more in his introduction about Channon’s life before the diary opens—the time he had already spent in Europe, the schooling in Paris that must have made him fluently francophone but doesn’t explain how he came to be the darling of the faubourg Saint-Germain eight years later. The short spell at Oxford, a year after the war ended, seems to have confirmed his taste for high, and preferably royal, society. Thereafter he made his home in England, and in 1933 became a British citizen. He lived all his life on money provided by his father and later by his father-in-law, though his terrific energy and excitability meant he was capable of hard work. He certainly saw himself as playing a significant part in the affairs of his adopted country. In the highly abridged first version of Channon’s diaries, prepared by his partner Peter Coats and published in 1967, the end of his marriage is presented as a vague matter of fact, with an almost complete absence of detail. Coats went to pains to conceal the truth about its demise and his own relationship with him, for two very good reasons. First, his ex-wife, Lady Honor Svejdar (as she had become after her second marriage) was still alive, and indeed was sent the proofs to read and to amend where she felt necessary; second, Coats, who hardly features in the first edition despite having been central to Channon’s life for its last 19 years, appears not to have desired the recognition he was due.

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A heavily abridged and censored edition of the diaries was published in 1967. Only now, sixty years after Chips's death, can an extensive text be shared. 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…”

Heffer, Simon (20 February 2021). "Exclusive: Inside the uncensored diaries of Britain's most scandalous MP". The Telegraph . Retrieved 23 February 2021. Peter] advised divorce, said that obviously neither H[onor] nor I would be happier until we were rid of each other. He agreed to live with me after the war, and to share my house, houses, or flat: we should travel together and be happy. I think he is right and I long for the day. 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. Every person mentioned, intimation given and allusion made is thoroughly investigated and explained. This is only the first volume of three, which together will form an essential part of the library of anyone interested in 20th century politics. He gets almost every political forecast wrong. He predicts a decline in socialism in early 1926, and a huge revival of Roman Catholicism. He wildly misreads the 1926 general strike, suggesting it was a “real revolt skilfully engineered by Moscow” which would end in civil war. The king, he says, “is supposed to be white with terror and apprehension”.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 Channon, who was a naturalised British subject (as of 11 July 1933), [17] joined the Conservative Party. At the 1935 general election, he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Southend, the seat previously held by his mother-in-law Gwendolen Guinness, Countess of Iveagh. After boundary changes in 1950, he was returned for the new Southend West constituency, holding the seat until his death in 1958. [4]

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? At the Berlin Olympics Channon had been a ready dupe for Nazi propaganda and was entirely taken in by a visit to a labor camp, repeopled for the purpose with “smiling and clean” eighteen-year-olds, “fair, healthy and sunburned.” But the diaries make horribly clear that his excitement at Nazism also fed on his own anti-Semitism, expressed in a casual, lurking contempt for Jewish friends such as Philip Sassoon and the Liberal MP and war minister Leslie Hore-Belisha: a semi-sedated prejudice easily reawakened. He records grotesque fantasies of shouting “Heil Hitler!,” on one occasion at a Jewish businessmen’s dinner in his own constituency. To a reader amused by the social whirl of the diaries, such things make disturbing reading, but Heffer was right to leave these and other even more offensive things in, not only for the fullness of the portrait but because they help explain the widespread British reluctance to take Hitler’s genocidal program seriously. Ferguson, Donna (3 November 2019). "Revealed: uncensored diaries of the Tory MP who partied with Nazis and the idle rich". The Observer . Retrieved 3 November 2019.In his comments accompanying the published selection, Rhodes James stated that "Peter Coats edited the original MS of the Diaries." [30] He also stated that Coats arranged the preparation of a complete typescript of the Diaries as Channon's handwriting was often difficult to read. [31] Coats also carried out an initial expurgation before the editorial discretion exercised by Rhodes James. [32]