Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, The Diaries 1918-38
Edited by Simon Heffer
£35, 1024pp, Hutchinson
________
Alan Clark, from close reading of the first volume of "Chips" Channon’s diaries, published in 1967, thought the writer to be “snobbish, arriviste, but intensely observant.” Little did he know that in a then unpublished entry, Chips considered Alan’s parents, whom he met when his father Kenneth Clark was appointed Director of the National Gallery, to be “chic, snobbish, clever, charming and a ‘touch bogus.’” The Channon diaries were the model for Alan Clark’s own, and both men could claim to be amongst the greatest political exponents of the artform in the twentieth century; their works full of caustic humour, honest self-reflection, sharp insights and wild indiscretions.
