Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries 1918-38

Edited by Simon Heffer Hutchinson, £35

In the Woody Allen movie

Zelig, the title character finds himself among the in-crowd of every great event of his age – and the subject of this book, Tory MP Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, was a real-life Zelig.

His diaries begin in the last year of the Great War with Chips in the trenches – he was a Red Cross official – and end with Neville Chamberlain’s appeasing of Hitler and Chips in the Foreign Office.

Between these dates, he was a Special Constable in the General Strike, attended the Berlin Olympics, had the children of Nazi diplomat von Ribbentrop over for a playdate, and was a confidant of Edward and Mrs Simpson during the abdication crisis of 1936.

Chips knew everyone. He played a stripping game (and probably more) with Hollywood screen goddess Tallulah Bankhead, and was “a little in love” with friend Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, eventually wife of George VI and Queen Mother.

For all of his assumed grand Britishness, Chips was American, hailing from Chicago. After a degree at Oxford, Chips – drawn to the bright young things of the British aristocracy – climbed the social heights and did so like a chimp wearing crampons. He was charming, handsome, and utterly Anglophiliac, a real-life Great Gatsby.

Throughout the 1920s, the diary entries begin “Dined with” followed by the name of some socialite. He supped with the Guinness-brewing family, married their Lady Honor and became instantly, madly wealthy. “Our riches are incalculable!” he exclaims to his diary.

He was a snob. S ocialists? “Smelly,” he said. His political judgment was dodgy. “The swastika flies over Vienna!” he writes euphorically after the Nazis’ 1938 swallowing of Austria.

This is not the first publication of Chips’ diaries. A 1967 edition was filleted to avoid offence to the living. Well, those living are now dead. So outed in this 1,000-page version are the Queen Mother (“growing fat”), Lady Astor (“unbalanced mentally”), and Lady Diana Cooper (“slept with half of London”).

The diaries are fascinating and sometimes a key historical record. And the man could write.

Still, I closed the covers with that sullied feeling you get at 11pm, after watching TV schlock for hours, and thinking a breath of fresh air would be nice.