Henry Channon
| Sir Henry Channon | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Member of Parliament for Southend West Southend (1935–1950) |
|
|
In office 14 November 1935 – 7 October 1958 |
|
| Preceded by | The Countess of Iveagh |
| Succeeded by | Paul Channon |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 7 March 1897 Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Died | 7 October 1958 (aged 61) London, England, UK |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse(s) | Lady Honor Guinness |
| Children | Paul Channon |
Sir Henry Channon (7 March 1897 – 7 October 1958), often known as Chips Channon, was an American-born British Conservative politician, author and diarist. Channon moved to England in 1920 and became strongly anti-American, feeling that American cultural and economic views threatened traditional European and British civilisation. He wrote extensively about these views. Channon quickly became enamoured of London society and became a social and political climber.
Channon was first elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1935. In his political career he failed to achieve ministerial office and was unsuccessful in his pursuit of a peerage, but he is remembered as one of the most famous political and social diarists of the 20th century. His diaries have so far been published only in an expurgated edition.
Channon was born in Chicago to an Anglo-American family. In adult life he took to giving 1899 as his year of birth, and was embarrassed when a British newspaper revealed that the true year was 1897. His grandfather had emigrated 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. Channon's paternal grandmother was descended from eighteenth century English settlers. Channon's parents were Vesta née Westover and Henry Channon II, known as Harry. After graduating from Francis W. Parker School and taking classes at the University of Chicago, Channon travelled to France with the American Red Cross in October 1917 and became an honorary attaché at the American embassy in Paris the next year.
In 1920 and 1921, Channon was at Christ Church, Oxford where he received a pass degree in French, and acquired the nickname "Chips". He began a lifelong friendship with Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, whom in his diaries he called "the person I have loved most". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) said of this phase of Channon's life, "adoring London society, privilege, rank, and wealth, he became an energetic, implacable, but endearing social climber." He also became an author.
Channon rejected his American background and was passionate about Europe in general and England in particular. The US, he said, was "a menace to the peace and future of the world. If it triumphs, the old civilisations, which love beauty and peace and the arts and rank and privilege, will pass from the picture." His anti-Americanism was reflected in his novel, Joan Kennedy published in 1929, described by the publishers as "the story of an English girl's marriage to a wealthy American and of her attempts to bridge the gulf created by differences of race and education." Channon's anti-Americanism did not prevent his living off American money. A grant of $90,000 from his father, and an $85,000 inheritance from his grandfather made him financially comfortable with no need to work. He wrote two more books: a second novel, Paradise City (1931) about the disastrous effects of American capitalism, and a non-fiction work, The Ludwigs of Bavaria (1933). The latter, a study of the last generations of the ruling Wittelsbach dynasty of Bavarian kings, received excellent notices, and was in print twenty years later. Some critical reservations reflected Channon's adulation of minor European royalty: The Manchester Guardian said of his account of the 1918 revolution, "he seems to have depended almost exclusively on aristocratic sources, which are most clearly insufficient." Despite this, the book was described on its reissue in 1952 as "a fascinating study ... excellently written". Reviews of both the 1933 edition and the reissue singled out a section on architecture and décor, Channon's expertise in which took a practical form shortly after the publication of the book when he had first a large town house and then a country house in which to engage his passion for design.
...
Wikipedia