A Review
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| Chips a/k//a Lord of Hosts |
Lord of Hosts—The Life of Sir
Henry “Chips” Channon By Richard Carreño [Philabooks|Press (2011)]
Bestowing the nomenclature 'Lord of Hosts' on Sir Henry “Chips” Channon has to be done with the lightest of touches, given the sphere in which he operated. ' Noel Coward with Clout' is another way of describing the man who moved with bon vivant ease through the portals of pre-to-post war power. It was Channon himself who assumed the title at his first lavish party after the war. He might not have thought he had the whole social world in his hands. But it showed confidence of the rarest sort to throw a party for the newly betrothed Princess Elizabeth and Navy Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten and then to crow the blasphemous boast when guest Somerset Maugham whispered, “This is the apogée of your career.”
The story behind this extraordinary ascent and its place in British socio-political history forms the nexus of Richard Carreño’s astonishing glimpse into an American takeover of Britain, second only to Wallis Simpson’s subversive assault on the Monarchy and looking forward to whatever on earth Donald Trump has in store for Britain’s battle-weary post-Brexiteers.
Carreño approaches his task less as a
standard biographer than as a polished detective in search of the
true identity of the diarist whose entries recorded supposed
scandalous deeds, at a time when homosexuality was still illegal. The
complete diaries have yet to appear in print. But Alan Clark, a
famous diarist himself and Carreño’s first interviewee, concluded
their meeting with the disclosure that the unpublished diaries had
been stolen. “I’d give…£100,000 for a look at those,” Clark
confessed.