Henry Channon

Early years Henry Channon was born on 7 March 1897 in Chicago, Illinois, to an Anglo-American family. In adult life he took to giving 1899 as his year of birth, and was embarrassed when a British newspaper revealed that the true year was 1897. His grandfather had immigrated to the US in the mid-nineteenth century and established a profitable fleet of vessels on the Great Lakes, which formed the basis of the family's wealth. Channon's paternal grandmother was descended from eighteenth-century English settlers. Channon II and his wife Vesta (née Westover). Channon travelled to France with the American Red Cross in October 1917 and became an honorary attaché at the American embassy in Paris the next year. In 1920 and 1921, Channon was at Christ Church, Oxford where he received a pass degree in French, and acquired the nickname "Chips". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) said of this phase of Channon's life, "adoring London society, privilege, rank, and wealth, he became an energetic, implacable, but endearing social climber." His anti-Americanism was reflected in his novel, Joan Kennedy (1929), described by the publishers as "the story of an English girl's marriage to a wealthy American and of her attempts to bridge the gulf created by differences of race and education." Channon's anti-Americanism did not prevent his living off his family's money, which had been made in America. A grant of $90,000 from his father, and an $85,000 inheritance from his grandfather made him financially comfortable with no need to work. Despite this, the book was described on its reissue in 1952 as "a fascinating study... excellently written". Relationships In 1933, Channon married the brewing heiress Lady Honor Guinness (1909–1976), eldest daughter of Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh. In 1935, their only child was born, a son, whom they named Paul. and two years later also acquired a country estate, Kelvedon Hall, at Kelvedon Hatch near Brentwood in Essex. Perhaps the apogee of his career in that role came on 19 November 1936, with a guest list headed by King Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson, of whom Channon was a friend and admirer, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, then Regent and his wife Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark, the Duke of Kent and his wife Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark . In July 1939, Channon met the landscape designer Peter Daniel Coats (1910–1990), with whom he began an affair that may have contributed to Channon's separation from his wife the following year. His wife, who had conducted extra-marital affairs from at least 1937, asked Channon for a divorce in 1941 as a result of her affair with Frank Woodsman, a farmer and horse dealer who was based close to their Kelvedon Hall estate. Their marriage was finally dissolved in 1945. Among others with whom Channon had a relationship was the playwright Terence Rattigan. Channon was on close terms with Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and the Duke of Kent, although whether those relationships extended beyond the platonic is not known. joined the Conservative Party. At the 1935 general election, he was elected as the member of parliament for Southend, the seat previously held by his mother-in-law Gwendolen Guinness, Countess of Iveagh. After boundary changes in 1950, he was returned for the new Southend West constituency, holding the seat until his death in 1958. Channon visited a concentration camp, which he praised in his diary as "tidy, even gay", being described in a 2021 article as "impressed" by what he saw. Normally a snob, Channon wrote that the purpose of these camps was to "wipe out class feeling". Channon remained a friend of Chamberlain's widow. Channon's interest in politics waned after this, and he took an increasing interest in the Guinness family brewing interests, though remaining a conscientious and popular constituency MP. Channon, who smoked and drank heavily, died from a stroke at a hospital in London on 7 October 1958, at the age of 61. ==Legacy==

Diaries At various points in his life Channon kept a series of diaries. Under his will, he left his diaries and other material to the British Museum "on condition that the said diaries shall not be read ... until 60 years from my death." An expurgated selection from the diaries was published in 1967. The necessity for expurgation is illustrated by the reaction of an Oxford contemporary who, when told that no diaries from that period existed, said, "Thank God!" The editor of the original edition, Robert Rhodes James, said he saw well-connected people go white when they heard that Channon had kept a journal. In his comments accompanying the published selection, Rhodes James stated that "Peter Coats edited the original MS of the Diaries." He also stated that Coats arranged the preparation of a complete typescript of the Diaries as Channon's handwriting was often difficult to read. Coats also carried out an initial expurgation before the editorial discretion exercised by Rhodes James. Robert Rhodes James quotes in his introduction to the diaries a self-portrait written by Channon on 19 July 1935: Comparing the above with the same section in the unexpurgated version of the Diaries gives some idea of how heavily Rhodes James, and/or Coats, laid his editorial hand on the manuscript: Reviewing the published diaries in The Observer in November 1967, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, "Grovellingly sycophantic and snobbish as only a well-heeled American nesting among the English upper classes can be, with a commonness that positively hurts at times. And yet – how sharp an eye! What neat malice! How, in their own fashion, well written and truthful and honest they are! … What a relief to turn to him after Sir Winston's windy rhetoric, and all those leaden narratives by field-marshals, air-marshals and admirals!" The diaries, even in their bowdlerised form, provoked a writ for libel from one of Channon's fellow MPs, though the case did not come to court, being settled privately in the decade after Channon's death. Historian Alan Clark, a Conservative MP from February 1974, refers on multiple occasions to Channon's diaries in his own diaries. Four previously unknown volumes turned up at a car boot sale in 1991. It was reported after Paul Channon's death that his heir, the diarist's grandson, was considering authorising the publication of the uncensored texts. While the 1967 edition began in 1934, the first volume of the complete version begins in 1918, and runs to 1938. However, diaries Channon wrote between 1929 and 1933 remain missing. The second volume, running from 1938 to 1943, was published on 9 September 2021; the third volume, covering years from 1943 to 1957, was published on 8 September 2022. Reputation Richard Davenport-Hines, the author of Channon's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) claims that Elliot Templeton in W. Somerset Maugham's novel ''The Razor's Edge'' (1944) and the disappointed schoolmaster Crocker-Harris in Terence Rattigan's play The Browning Version (1948) were partly inspired by Channon. Among his contemporaries, Channon's reputation ranged from high to low. Following the 1967 publication of the selected diaries, Nancy Mitford said that "you can't think how vile & spiteful & silly it is. [...] One always thought Chips was rather a dear, but he was black inside[,] how sinister!" Max Hastings referred to Channon as a "consummate ass". ==Notes==