26 Facts About Henry Channon

Sir Henry Channon, known as Chips Channon, was an American-born British Conservative politician, author and diarist.

Henry Channon quickly became enamoured of London society and became a social and political figure.

Henry Channon was first elected as a member of parliament in 1935.

Henry Channon is remembered as one of the most famous political and social diarists of the 20th century.

Henry Channon's diaries were first published in an expurgated edition in 1967.

Henry Channon's 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.

Henry Channon associated with the artistic elite of Paris, having dinners with the writer Marcel Proust and poet Jean Cocteau.

In 1920 and 1921, Henry Channon was at Christ Church, Oxford where he received a pass degree in French, and acquired the nickname "Chips".

Henry Channon began a lifelong friendship with Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, whom in his diaries he called "the person I have loved most".

Henry Channon rejected his American background and was passionate about Europe in general and England in particular.

Henry Channon wrote two more books: a second novel, Paradise City about the disastrous effects of American capitalism, and a non-fiction work, The Ludwigs of Bavaria.

In 1933, Henry Channon married the brewing heiress Lady Honor Guinness, eldest daughter of Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh.

Henry Channon quickly established himself as a society host, in his blue and silver dining room designed by Stephane Boudin and modelled on the Amalienburg in Munich.

In July 1939, Henry Channon met the landscape designer Peter Daniel Coats, with whom he began an affair that may have contributed to Henry Channon's separation from his wife the following year.

Henry Channon formally sued for divorce and his wife did not contest the suit.

Henry 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.

Henry Channon, who was a naturalised British subject, joined the Conservative Party.

Henry 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, Henry Channon wrote that the purpose of these camps was to "wipe out class feeling".

However, despite his dislike of the League, Henry Channon enjoyed the grand parties in Geneva.

Henry Channon remained loyal to the supplanted Neville Chamberlain, toasting him after his fall as "the King over the Water", and sharing Butler's denigration of Churchill as "a half-breed American".

Once it became clear that he would not achieve ministerial office, Henry Channon focused on his other goal of elevation to the peerage, but in this, too, he was unsuccessful.

Henry Channon, who smoked and drank heavily, died from a stroke at a hospital in London on 7 October 1958, at the age of 61.

At various points in his life Henry Channon kept a series of diaries.

However, diaries Henry Channon wrote between 1929 and 1933 remain missing.

Henry Channon installed the mighty in his gilded chairs and exalted the humble.