Chips with Everything: part two

Channon continues his hectic social life, when the diaries come to a halt, just as important events in his life take place. I couldn’t make out whether he stopped writing during these years or the diaries had disappeared. When we pick up the story again, he has married Lady Honor Guinness and become very rich indeed. He has made no secret of his desire to be rich or of his secret longing to be a peer. The marriage is not a success, although he says he loves Honor and worries about her. They have a child, Paul (later a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government), whom he worships; he absolutely dotes on ‘my baby boy’. He would love lots more children but, after three years of marriage, Honor not only refuses to have another child but tells him that ‘conjugal relations’ (his words, not my euphemism), are off. This upsets him and he blames it for his renewed indulgence in what he calls ‘lechery’, i.e. gay affairs. Neither wants a divorce but all they seem to have in common is a love of buying houses (one in Belgrave Square and a country house, Kelvedon), doing them up at great expense and filling them with incredibly expensive antiques and bibelots. How he loves jewels, both for himself and his wife!
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