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"Chips": The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon
 
 
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"Chips": The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (Paperback)

by Chips Channon (Author), Robert Rhodes James (Editor)
4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 512 pages
  • Publisher: Phoenix; New edition edition (5 Aug 1996)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1857994930
  • ISBN-13: 978-1857994933
  • Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.6 x 4.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 279,887 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
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 priviliged 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.
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6 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Chips Channon: the Prince of Diarists., 14 April 2001
By A Customer
To my mind, this book establishes Chips Channon as the undisputed Prince of Diarists: as well informed as Pepys, as racy and as effortlessly snobbish as Alan Clark. Robert Rhodes James primly informs us in his introduction that he had been suitably discreet and removed many of the spicier scandals from the diaries but what survives is Channon's wonderfully feline assessment of all the leading personalities of the day and a uniquely honest portrait of a man in the round.

There is really no better account of the Abdication of Edward VIII or the Munich Crisis because Channon sees and presents them from the inside, from the dinner tables of the capital or the Smoking Room of the House of Commons.

As befitted a fabulously wealthy American who aspired to be an English gent, Channon was a fascinated observer of the London social scene and again and again in the diaries he brilliantly renders for us the glamour that surrounds power and the way in which politics operates through a web of gossip, affairs and private vendettas.

Best savoured a few delightful pages at a time, this book is to be thoroughly recommended for its wit, its pen portraits of personalities as various as Chamberlain, Wallace Simpson and Bosie Douglas (aged ex lover of Oscar Wilde) and (for this reviewer)its deep underlying melancholy.

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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Horrible, 16 Oct 2004
By Chris (formerly of Etton, nr Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England) - See all my reviews
Like the Curzon sisters, Chips Channon was both a truly fascinating and truly horrible man. He was unforgiveably rude to servants (always a bad sign). One cannot decide whether he married his Guinness wife because he loved a) her, b) her money, or c) her social connections, but probably a lot more of b and c than a. Whatever kind of bisexual, cad, and/or prototypical social-climber he was, Chips Channon was one of the three unquestionably great diarists of the 20th century (the other two being the unequalled James Lees-Milne and the runner-up Alan Clark). Chips' diaries are acutely perceptive, witty, biting (esp his earlier entries re Winston C), snobbish in excelsis, self-involved to the point of absurdity, and utterly, utterly fascinating. One wonders whether he had a great degree of self-knowledge (unlike Lees-Milne or Clark), though. His commentary on the great people, places, and events he experienced is entrancing, and his descriptions are often sublime. It is said that his son Paul Channon is reluctant to allow an expanded version of Chips' diaries because of the quite well-deserved scandal they would engender. Since Paul's political career is over, he ought to add a few more pounds to his bank balance and put all two million words of his father's diaries into print. They would be a sensation, and a guaranteed huge seller. As it is, even the "edited" bowlderized version we now have is one of the great English diaries of all time - and written by an American! Imagine!
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars For a writer, 11 May 2003
This review is from: Diaries Of Chips Channon: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (Paperback)
If you are a writer, or a would be writer, this is a masterpiece of clear prose and vocabulary building fundamentals. If you just like reading and want intelligent descriptions of world class leaders from a bygone era, no book is better. With the exception of Alan Clark's Diaries, Chips is the best at stimulating the writing instincts and should be a primer for teachers trying to get students to write. Chips shows that diaries are the best way to help anyone find their writerly voice. And for non-writing reader there is enormous satisfaction in wandering the fields of clear language and richly described personalities, with the leading character being Winston Churchill. I would recommend Churchill's "My Early Youth" as a follow on to Chips. Unlike Chips, Churchill flunked may courses in high school and retook his basic English class three times, saying he didn't learn much Latin or Greek, but he learned a fair amount of English, enough to win a Pulitzer Prize.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating insight into pre ww2 upper classes
A very interesting book for anyone interested in or is studying British history or politics. Chips was an M. Read more
Published 3 months ago by theunknownwarriors.co.uk

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and revealing diaries
Channon wrote one of the best insider's accounts of politics in the 1930s. He was a fanatical supporter of Neville Chamberlain and his policy of what is still called -... Read more
Published 14 months ago by William Podmore

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent diary with insight into Britain in the 1930s
Super interesting diary covering a host of fascinating events. "Chips" Channon is unusual combination of being an excellent writer who is completely at sea in... Read more
Published on 24 Nov 2001

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