The second volume of the remarkable Sunday Times bestselling diaries of Chips Channon.A masterpiece a time machine that transports the reader back to British politics and high society at the end of the 1930s. Robert HarrisThe uncensored unvarnished thought of one of the 20th centurys greatest diarists. Best Biographies of the Year TelegraphAn unrivalled guide to the social and political life of Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Books of the Year The TimesFascinating. New StatesmanNever a dull day never a dull sentence. Daily MailThis second volume of the bestselling diaries of Henry Chips Channon takes us from the heady aftermath of the Munich agreement when the Prime Minister so admired by Chips was credited with having averted a general European conflagration through the rapid unravelling of appeasement and on to the tribulations of the early years of the Second World War. It closes with a moment of hope as Channon in recording the fall of Mussolini in July 1943 reflects The war must be more than half over.For much of this period Channon is genuinely an eyewitness to unfolding events. He reassures Neville Chamberlain as he fights for his political life in May 1940. He chats to Winston Churchill while the two men inspect the bombedout chamber of the House of Commons a few months later. From his desk at the Foreign Office he charts the progress of the war. But with the departure of his boss Rab Butler to the Ministry of Education and Channons subsequent exclusion from the corridors of power his life changes and with it the preoccupations and tone of the diaries. The conduct of the war remains a constant theme but more personal preoccupations come increasingly to the fore. As he throws himself back into the pleasures of society he records his encounters with the likes of Nol Coward Prince Philip General de Gaulle and Oscar Wildes erstwhile lover Lord Alfred Douglas. He describes dinners with members of European royal dynasties and recounts gossip and