CHANNON, Sir Henry

Sir Henry Channon (7 March 1897 7 October 1958), often known as Chips Channon, was an American-born British Conservative politician, author and diarist. Channon moved to England in 1920 and became strongly anti-American, feeling that American cultural and economic views threatened traditional European and British civilisation. He wrote extensively about these views. Channon quickly became enamoured of London society and became a social and political climber.

[495] pp.

Phoenix Giant

1993

9 1/4" x 6 1/4"

Fine

Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon's extraordinary diaries, first published in 1967, are now considered a modern classic. The years covered in this volume,1934-53, recall a vanished world where Channon's privileged orbit circled every social and public figure of the day in a round of parties, balls, country-house weekends and endless gossip. His position as a MP enabled him to chronicle, famously, the Abdication Crisis, when King Edward VIII's love for 'jolly, plain' unprepossessing' Mrs. Simpson reduced him to 'a broken man at bay'. Culled from some three million words in the original, Robert Rhodes James's selection gives us the moments and characters of history, etched indelibly by a master observer.