Club gets fourth portion of Chips
The excitement was palpable in the Wheatsheaf on 1st November as a goodly throng assembled for an epoch-making address by the Earl of Essex. Epoch-making because it was to be the first time anyone had delivered a record four talks on the same subject. That subject was the diaries of Sir Henry "Chips" Channon, who moved among the great and the good in the years leading up to and after the Second World War. I think I'm right in saying that Essex originally talked to us based on the heavily edited diaries that had been available for some time, but returned to the subject when the unexpurgated text was recently released.
Channon had married Honor Guinness and had been Permanent Private Secretary to R.A.B. Butler, but by the time of this final instalment his fortunes are somewhat in decline. Churchill had no time for him: Essex believes this was because of Channon's homosexuality—and during this period he gets divorced from Honor, removing the convenient smokescreen of marriage—though a right-thinking person could think of plenty of other reasons to take a dim view of him. As ever he is snobbish and self-obsessed; his big beef with Churchill is that the latter wouldn't give him the peerage he feels he deserves. He has inherited a lot of capital which generates an income, yet he is constantly overspending on fripperies and dwelling on the value of gifts given and received. He is on the Guinness board and rails against the other directors for not declaring more generous dividends. Throughout this section of the diaries are clues to his failing health, digestive troubles, regular injections (we're not sure of what, though some in the room suspected vitamins) and an obsession with colonic irrigation. It seems a lifetime of hard drinking, smoking, benzadrine abuse and rich dining was catching up with him. (Incidentally, he reports sneaking benzadrine into cocktails served to his guests, guests who seem to have included the Queen Mother.)
Essex didn't actually make it to the very end of the diaries as, after about 80 minutes he felt it was time to draw the lecture to a close, though he revealed that Channon died in 1958, aged 61, having spent the previous year bedridden. Many thanks to Essex for this latest insight into the life and views of this waspish and hugely indiscrete figure.
You can see a video of the talk at https://youtu.be/lNe100pjYTQ and an album of still photos from the evening at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720312404567.
The Pompei brothers, Andy and Iain, who have both recently joined the Club
