Anglo-American politician, writer and diarist Henry “Chips” Channon was BOTD in 1897. Born in Chicago, Illinois to a wealthy industrialist family, he studied at the University of Chicago, before travelling to France with the American Red Cross in 1917. He worked for the US Embassy in 1918, establishing himself in Parisian society and befriending literary gays Marcel Proust and Jean Cocteau. He moved to England in 1920, studying at Oxford University, where he met Evelyn Waugh and acquired the nickname “Chips”. Renouncing his American heritage (though keeping his family’s trust fund money), he relocated to London and became a dedicated social climber, mixing with Bright Young Things including Harold Acton, Robert Byron, Cecil Beaton, Tom Driberg, L. P. Hartley, Brian Howard, James Lees-Milne, Hugh Lygon, Nancy and Tom Mitford, Richard, David and Olivia Plunket Greene, Gavin Henderson and Stephen Tennant. During the 1920s, Channon lived with his lover Prince Paul of Yugoslavia in central London, later joined by Channon’s other lover Henry, Viscount Gage. He published two gossipy novels and a study of the Wittelsbach dynasty of Bavarian kings, showcasing his adoration of monarchy. In 1933, he married the heiress Lady Honor Guinness, with whom he had a son. With his wife’s fortune, he established himself as a society host, entertaining European royalty at his lavishly decorated Belgravia home and becoming close friends with King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. He joined the Conservative Party in 1933 and was elected to Parliament in 1935, becoming private under-secretary to Foreign Office minister Rab Butler. A vocal anti-Semite and Nazi sympathiser, Channon was invited by Nazi high command to attend the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he partied with Hermann Göring and visited early versions of concentration camps. In 1938, he headed the British delegation to the League of Nations (an organisation he despised), supporting prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement efforts with Germany and criticising Winston Churchill‘s anti-Hitler stance. Channon’s political career plummeted after Churchill became prime minister and Britain entered World War Two, and he lost his social standing over his pro-appeasement beliefs. He and Honor divorced in 1945, following years of mutual extra-marital affairs. He retained his seat in Parliament, advocating unsuccessfully for elevation to the peerage, though managed to secure a knighthood. He died in 1958, aged 61, leaving his diaries to the British Museum. Expurgated versions were published in 1967, deleting references to Channon’s bisexuality and his bitchy comments about King George VI (“a well-meaning bore”), Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (“[she has] a streak of treachery and gay malice”) and Churchill (“fat, wicked old Winston… a half-breed American”). His unexpurgated diaries were published in three volumes between 2018 and 2022, providing a candid portrait of 1930s British society and detailed accounts of Channon’s affairs with Prince Paul (whom he called “the person I have loved most”), Viscount Gage, landscape designer Peter Coats, playwright Terence Rattigan, actress Tallulah Bankhead and possibly the Duke of Kent. He is thought to be the inspiration for the social climber Elliott Templeton in W. Somerset Maugham‘s novel The Razor’s Edge and the disappointed schoolmaster in Rattigan’s play The Browning Version.