The political career of Conservative MP Henry ‘Chips’ Channon (1897-1958) was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Witty, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and knew everyone. This third and final volume begins as the Second World war is turning in the Allies’ favour. It closes with Chips slowly descending into poor health but striving to remain socially active. En route, we see him assiduously record the tribulations of both Labour and Conservative governments in parliament, gossip about the private lives of the great and the good, and conduct passionate affairs with a young army officer and the playwright Terence Rattigan, while being serially unfaithful to both. Throughout, he confirms his position as ‘the greatest British diarist of the 20th century’.
