Sir Henry Channon - The Diaries of Chips Channon: 1938-43

Edited by Simon Heffer

Sir Henry (Chips) Channon was born in Chicago in 1897 (although he claimed 1899 as the year of his birth, until the true facts were exposed to his embarrassment in the Sunday Express). The son of a wealthy businessman, he accompanied the American Red Cross to Paris in 1917, was an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, and then settled in London where he mingled with society and enjoyed the high life. He married into the Guinness family, and became a Conservative MP for Southend from 1935 until his death. He knew or was friends with all the leading politicians and aristocrats of the period, wined and dined Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson in the months before the Abdication crisis, and observed at first hand the last days of appeasement. He died in 1958. Elliot Templeton in Somerset Maughams novel The Razors Edge (1944) and the disappointed schoolmaster Croker-Harris in Rattigans play The Browning Version (1948) were partly inspired by Channon.

We are very pleased now to be able to publish this second volume of our grandfathers diaries and with this volume we have again had help and advice from Robin Howard, our co-trustee; Georgina Capel, our literary agent; Nigel Wilcockson, associate publisher at our publishers, Penguin Random House; and Hugo Vickers. However, as with the first volume, our greatest debt of gratitude goes to Professor Simon Heffer, who has continued to bring to the task of editing this volume the same outstanding skills, knowledge, dedication and great enthusiasm he brought to editing the first volume.

We would also like to acknowledge again the contribution made by Helen Howard in preparing copies of the manuscripts and then helping to check their transcription, and to offer our thanks to the transcribers who worked on this volume: Consuela Barker, Fergus Burnand, Alex Colville, Domenica Dunne, Ned Dunne and Luke Regan.

We have asked the publishers to reproduce after this foreword our foreword to Volume 1, so that readers of this second volume can fully understand the background to the publication of what will ultimately be a three-volume version of our grandfathers diaries. We would also like to bring to readers attention the two important points we made in the last paragraph which equally apply to this volume.

Georgia Fanshawe and Henry Channon

Our grandfathers diaries have been part of our lives since we have been old enough to be aware of them. During the lifetime of our father, Paul Channon, Lord Kelvedon, we knew he was approached a number of times over the years about publishing them in full. However, we were also aware of the dilemma he faced, given the initial negative reaction to the heavily abridged edition that was published in 1967, and the fact that many people mentioned in the diaries members of the wider family, friends and acquaintances were still alive.

The last time our father gave serious consideration to publishing a full version was in 2004, when he asked Kenneth Rose to review those diaries that had not been represented in the published abridgement (1918 and 192328, and also the diaries for the years 1954 and 1958 which had turned up in a car boot sale a few years earlier). He also discussed the matter, and Kenneths review, with us and with Robin Howard, who is our co-trustee for the diaries, and who has acted as an adviser to the Guinness family for many years. He told Robin that he was still in two minds about what to do, but urged that if he had not arranged publication of the full diaries during his lifetime, Robin should encourage us to do so. The fact that a clause in our grandfathers will expressed the hope that the full diaries would be published sixty years after his death in other words, in 2018 added to the expectation that a full version would eventually see the light of day.

We are therefore very pleased that we have been able to realise our grandfathers and our fathers ambition. This would not have been possible, however, without the considerable help and advice of Robin, who, after we had held some abortive discussions with another editor in 2012, offered in late 2016 to take on the task of arranging the full transcription of the diaries. He has gone on to help us agree the appointment of our literary agent, editor and publisher.

The other person we are greatly indebted to is Professor Simon Heffer, who has brought to the task of editing the diaries his outstanding skills and knowledge, as well as great enthusiasm and application. It has been an enormous pleasure working with him.

We would also like to acknowledge the help we have received from Dr Oliver Cox and David Howell of Oxford University, who gave us advice on the handling of the manuscript diaries and other archive material; Alan Williams, who gave us advice on various legal agreements; our literary agent, Georgina Capel; Nigel Wilcockson, publishing director at our publishers, Penguin Random House; and Hugo Vickers, who kindly agreed to read the text of Volume 1 and who made some very helpful comments. In addition, we would like to acknowledge the contribution made by Helen Howard, who has assisted Robin by preparing copies of the manuscript diaries for use by the transcribers and Simon and then checking and correcting the transcriptions, and we offer our thanks to the transcribers who worked on Volume 1: Ralph Lopes, Isabella Darby, Haseeb Iqbal and Gabriella Dawson.

Finally, we would like to mention two important points about this new edition. Firstly, given the historical value of the diaries, we felt it vital that Simon should have full editorial control over what to include. Secondly, as Simon discusses more fully in his Introduction, we wish to stress that because the diaries inevitably reflect the attitudes of the time they were written, they include some language and opinions that are now rightly considered to be outdated and offensive. They also contain sometimes critical or disparaging comments and disclosures about the parents and relatives of members of our wider family and friends. We want to make it clear that such material has been retained solely to ensure the editorial integrity of the diaries, and that its inclusion does not mean that we in any way condone it, or wish to cause embarrassment or offence.

Georgia Fanshawe and Henry Channon

This second of the three volumes of the unexpurgated diaries of Henry Chips Channon (18971958) covers a period of just under five years; five of the most dramatic and tumultuous years in British history. The diaries open in October 1938, just as Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of the National Government that has ruled since 1931, has returned from Munich, and his meeting with Hitler at which the Sudetenland was carved out of Czechoslovakia and given to the Nazi Reich. Channon, as an appeaser and a deeply loyal devotee of Chamberlain, is relieved and delighted, describing Chamberlain in the entry for 1 October 1938 as the man of the age. The volume ends in late July 1943, as Mussolini is toppled and the Allies, having forced the Germans out of North Africa, are fighting their way through Sicily. By that stage Channon has witnessed the fall of Chamberlain, the rise of Churchill, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. There have been massive changes in the world, and in Channons life and character.