Chips

'And what is more dull than a discreet diary? One might just as well have a discreet soul' 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 privileged 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 Member of Parliament 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.