I reckon I have written more than 250,000 words here, a bagatelle compared to Chips Channon whose fifty or so volumes of diaries run to more than three million words.
And what words: he liked to drop in a bit of French, like “dégommé” and “embusqué”, and he over-uses “bibelots”. They were an obsession of his to the extent that when he buried his diaries in his garden at Kelvedon Hall a smaller box of bibelots was buried beside them. This important task was executed by the head gardener under supervision by Chips in 1942. Chips, whose opinion was usually wrong, expected an imminent German invasion.
Extracts from the diaries were published in 1967, less than ten years after his death. They cover the period 1934 – 1953 and much has been omitted. The later diaries, 1954 – 1958 have never been published. In 1993 Robert Rhodes James, who edited the earlier extracts, comments they “include the Suez crisis and MacMillan’s succession to the Premiership in preference to Chips’ great friend Rab Butler – but contain comments on, and information about, people still living that has postponed their publication”. That was twenty-four years ago and now, as the 60th anniversary of Chips’ death approaches, it is time for this to be put right.
Meanwhile I have had a message from a friend telling me that his wife is sorting through her parents’ tchotchkes, not a word I was familiar with but it turns out to mean bibelots – more or less.