Exclusive: Inside the uncensored diaries of Britain s most scandalous MP
He loathed Churchill, admired Hitler and thought Wallis Simpson should have been Queen. So who exactly was Sir Henry Chips Channon?
20 February 2021 • 6:00am
More than 60 years after his death, Sir Henry Chips Channon s diaries are being published uncensored for the first time. The serialisation starts in tomorrow s Telegraph
Credit: Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, Sotheby s London / Getty Images
When the diaries of Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, the Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea and friend and confidant of the titled, rich and famous, first appeared in 1967, they scandalised London society and created a national sensation. Malcolm Muggeridge, a leading television pundit and writer, said in his review that Channon appeared ‘grovellingly sycophantic and snobbish’, pointing to the America-born diarist’s desire to ingratiate himself with the smartest people in England.
The baritone is back
Credit: Henry Bourne
Everything about the world-renowned bass-baritone Bryn Terfel is big: his voice, his burly 6ft 4in frame, his reputation and – following the birth of his fifth child, Alffi, last year – his family. Yet the 55-year-old’s first UK opera appearance after lockdown will be in one of our smaller, newer houses – as Verdi’s Falstaff at Grange Park Opera in Surrey in June.
‘As you can see, it’s tiny,’ he booms, gesturing at the rotunda, its 700-seat auditorium modelled on La Scala, which impresario Wasfi Kani erected in the grounds of a crumbling country house at blinding speed in 2017. We’re in his bare dressing room during a period of lockdown relaxation, windows and doors open, Terfel dominating the small space in jeans, tweed jacket and boots.
Liz Truss: ‘Growing up
I didn’t meet
many Tories’
Credit: Polly Tootal
In 1983 in Paisley, near Glasgow, Liz Truss was made to play the role of Margaret Thatcher in a mock election held by her school. She was only eight, but she had already absorbed the vehemently anti-Tory attitudes around her at home, from Left-wing parents, and at school, from Left-wing teachers. ‘I didn’t even vote for myself,’ she says, laughing. Quietly, however, she recalls that she was already ‘fascinated by Mrs Thatcher’.
The Trade Secretary – 45, blonde, clipped, smilingly efficient – has only been in her post 18 months, but has already clocked up more trade agreements than most other ministers sign in a lifetime. Mark Wallace of blog Conservative Home even went so far as dubbing her ‘an unsung hero of post-Brexit deals’. For her, it was a chance to put into practice decades of fervent belief in free trade, inspired by the political figure she once reviled.
Prescriptions of psychiatric drugs are soaring - but are sadness and grief being confused with depression?
6 February 2021 • 6:00am A person’s feelings are “medicalised” – framed as something for which you need to “get help”. And usually, these days, it’s with drugs.
Credit: Illustration by Lisa Sheehan
Five years ago my medical records read like a psychiatry textbook. Stressed and unhappy after the sudden end of my marriage in 2010, I stopped being able to sleep. My GP told me I had an ‘adjustment disorder’ and gave me sleeping pills. When these didn’t work, I was diagnosed with depression and put on antidepressants. Still floored with insomnia two months later, I found myself in the office of an NHS psychiatrist.