CHIPS CHANNON ON…

The gossipy diarist was king of the one-liner

GEORGE V I ‘Bertie York, or Pork, as we now all unkindly call him. [He is] good, he is dull, he is dutiful and good-natured. He is completely uninteresting, undistinguished and a godawful bore!’ Also, ‘[He is] enormously improved [since marriage]. [His wife] has him completely under her thumb.’

QUEEN ELIZABETH Later the Queen Mother

‘She is fundamentally lazy, very lazy and charming, always gay and pleasant and smiling. She has some intelligence and reads a lot, but she is devoid of all eye, and her houses have always been banal and hideous… She will never be a great Queen for she will never be up in time!’

DUKE OF WINDSOR ‘The ex-king’ in Channon’s diary

‘I also have always thought that [he] suffers from sexual repression of another nature. His horror of anything even savouring of homosexuality was exaggerated.’

DUCHESS OF WINDSOR

‘Wallis is a woman of charm, sense, balance, and great wit. She has dignity and taste; she has always been an excellent influence on the King... She would have been an excellent Queen. She was never ill at ease and could in her engaging drawl charm anyone; she is, however, une maîtresse-femme, a gambler with life and ambitious.’

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

‘Winston as PM would be worse than war.’ ‘Mrs Churchill confided to someone that she never knew when she was safe from [him]; he exerts his conjugal rights at odd times and in unexpected places – frequently after a debate.’

HITLER

‘He is always right, always the greatest diplomat of modern times.’

THE QUEEN

‘I have a feeling the child will be the Queen of England and perhaps the last sovereign. The baby becomes the first lady in the land and the third heir to the crown.’

EDITH WHARTON American writer

‘She was a tidy, crisp, stately, ironical woman devoid of charm; indeed she impressed me as being rather grim… [She] was always preaching her superiority to the rest of her compatriots. Indeed she was justified.’

LADY HONOR GUINNESS Channon’s wife

‘V charming, but at times vague and moody.’

FREDA DUDLEY WARD Socialite and married paramour to the Duke of Windsor

‘Always Queen of the bitches, that silly undernourished hysterical little woman.’