{"product_id":"henry-chips-channon-the-diaries-volume-2-by-chips-channon-9781529160215","title":"Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 2)","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The greatest British diarist of the 20th century... finally, we are getting the full text, in all its bitchy, scintillating detail\" - \u003cem\u003eBen Macintyre\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\"A masterpiece - a time machine that transports the reader back to British politics and high society at the end of the 1930s.\" - \u003cem\u003eRobert Harris\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\"An unrivalled guide to the social and political life of Britain in the first half of the 20th century.\" - \u003cem\u003eBooks of the Year, The Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\"Fascinating.\" - \u003cem\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\"Never a dull day, never a dull sentence.\" - \u003cem\u003eDaily Mail\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis second of three volumes opens in October 1938 with Channon optimistically believing that his hero Neville Chamberlain can stave off a general European conflagration. It closes with the expression of his hope that Mussolini's fall from power in July 1943 means \"The war must be more than half over\".\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn the intervening pages, he charts diplomatic to-ings and fro-ings and political manoeuvring, hatches a plan to keep Yugoslavia in the Allied camp, dines with English high society and foreign royalty, and passes not-always-charitable judgements on contemporaries who range from Winston Churchill and General de Gaulle to Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde's erstwhile lover Lord Alfred Douglas.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46372089823468,"sku":"9781529160215","price":26.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/12023873482732.jpg?v=1744815774","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/products\/henry-chips-channon-the-diaries-volume-2-by-chips-channon-9781529160215","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}