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  • The Critic Magazine

    World-class snob, first-class diarist

    Mar 25, 2021 5 minutes
    Andrew Roberts

    THE BEST DIARISTS ARE flawed individuals who exist on the fringe of great events and are natural observers and acerbic wits. Snobbery helps too. Think Samuel Pepys, James Boswell, Alan Clark. Henry “Chips” Channon (1897-1958) has long been seen as one of these too, but it is only with the publication of these unexpurgated diaries, superbly edited by Simon Heffer, that we can truly recognise quite how perfectly he fits the type.

    Born into a rich Chicagoan family, Channon fell in love with European culture as honorary attaché to the American embassy in Paris, where we find him when these diaries open in 1918. Living off his parents until 1933, he then married the heiress Lady Honor Guinness, and became Conservative MP for Southend in the 1935 general election. This first volume of his diaries ends in September 1938, by which time Channon was parliamentary private secretary to Rab Butler,

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