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Letters from Lockdown
Letters from Lockdown
Nov 15, 2024 3:13 PM

Author:Evan Davis

Letters from Lockdown

A remarkable collection of 'Covid Chronicles' -- stories from lockdown sent in from listeners to BBC Radio 4 -- making a deeply moving people's history of the pandemic.

On 23 March 2020, as the deadly virus spread around the world, the UK went into lockdown. In the following weeks and months, it became clear that in many ways we were all in this together, but the illness and the long period of isolation would hit people in entirely different ways.

When BBC Radio 4's PM Programme launched the 'Covid Chronicles' series, listeners from across the country - and beyond - began sending in their lockdown stories to be aired on the show. The results are astonishing: moving, profound, funny, powerful and an invaluable record of our collective experiences. Ranging from the everyday (the thrill of booking a food delivery) to the momentous (a wedding on Zoom), we hear about birth and death, loneliness and loss, community and kindness, as well as remarkable stories from those working in the NHS on the front line.

This book is a collection of some of these Chronicles, written in the midst of one of the most unexpected and intense moments in our history. Together they give us an unforgettable portrait of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times, with all the humour and tragedy and uncertainty we've been through.

'It's inspiring that so many people have shared their stories - some everyday, some life-changing, but all very human. This is a wonderful collection of experiences, to record and remember this devastating year' Christie Watson, bestselling author of The Language of Kindness

Reviews

It's inspiring that so many people have shared their stories - some everyday, some life-changing, but all very human. This is a wonderful collection of experiences, to record and remember this devastating year

—— Christie Watson, author of The Courage to Care

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life

—— Oscar Wilde

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society

—— Mark Twain

'Ravi Somaiya's brilliant unwrapping of the mystery surrounding Hammarskjold's death will convert the reader into an avid investigator the moment they pick up this book! Operation Morthor also raises key questions before governments who still act suspiciously: why? What are you hiding exactly?'

—— Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN Human Rights Chief (2014-2018)

'What caused the 1961 plane crash that killed UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld, who was attempting at the time to end a war in the Congo? Investigative journalist Somaiya lays out the evidence suggesting foul play in his impressive debut. An eye-opening account'

—— Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review

Although Channon was frequently wrong and occasionally repellent, there is no denying his talent as a diarist or the historical value of his diaries. Lacking pomposity or dissemblance, his entries are often witty, sometimes perceptive, and always fascinating

—— Air Mail

The diaries are fascinating and sometimes a key historical record. And the man could write.

—— Daily Mirror

Heffer has done his job with scholarly aplomb. Throughout his life [Chips] had the knack - invaluable for a diarist with dreams of publication - of bumping into all the right people. Fascinating stuff . . . a work of high camp.

—— Craig Brown , The Spectator

Gripping reading . . . While countless of Chip's decent contemporaries and especially politicians are today forgotten, the diaries make him an indispensable source for anyone writing of this period.

—— Max Hastings , The Sunday Times

A fabulous potpourri of first-hand history, snobbish gossip, acute insight and stomach-churning enthusiasm for Nazism (by no means unique among the British upper-classes at the time). Channon was vain, funny, bitchy, clever, pithy and fabulously well-connected: all the qualities of a superb diarist.

—— Ben Macintyre , Daily Mail

Chips perfectly embodied the qualities vital to the task: a capacious ear for gossip, a neat turn of phrase, a waspish desire to tell all, and easy access to the highest social circles across Europe . . . Blending Woosterish antics with a Lady Bracknellesque capacity for acid comment. Replete with fascinating insights.

—— Jesse Norman , Financial Times

Chips Channon, the bisexual snob and socialite who hobnobbed (and more) with royalty, politicians and famous writers . . . a new, expanded version of his disclosures has left some readers gasping at his audacity, indiscretion and promiscuity.

—— AN Wilson , The Times Weekend Essay

A masterpiece of storytelling and character assassination . . . Heffer's footnoted forays into Burke's and the Almanach de Gotha are worth reading alone for the picture they paint of a world so shifting and slippery that forging an identity is as much an act of will as an accident of history.

—— Book of the Day , Guardian

Channon is a delightful guide, by turns frivolous and profound.

—— The Times Book of the Week

A compelling account of the extraordinary times of interwar Britain. Reading Chips is like eating a rich cream. Impossible to put down. A superb edition of an indispensable chronicle.

—— The Oldie Magazine

Heffer has done a stupendous job. Eminently worth publishing.

—— Literary Review

I cannot put down Simon Heffer's wonderful edition of Chips Channon's diaries . . . Channon was a natural diarist - observant, gossipy, snobbish, disarming, preposterous, agonised and, more rarely, horrible.

—— Charles Moore , The Spectator

Channon, then, was a cipher for his times. An unremarkable politician, a mediocre intellect, and the morals of an alley cat on Viagra, did not prevent him from being the most acute commentator on his era.

—— The Herald

This enthralling book confirms Channon as the "greatest British diarist of the 20th century" . . . It's packed with "weapons-grade above-stairs gossip" and superb one-line put-downs: Stravinsky looks "like a German dentist" . . . it provides an unrivalled guide to society and politics in the interwar years.

—— Book of the Week , The Week

In his heyday, Tory politician Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon knew everyone and was present at almost every big event of the first half of the Twentieth Century . . . The diary is a whopper but there are gems on every page. Highly recommended and I'm looking forward to volumes two and three.

—— Express

Many complicated human relations are on display in these irresistible diaries . . . The editor deserves the greatest praise. He has rightly included everything that brings Channon's shimmering brittle world to life . . . He has a gift for the sharp, striking phrase which bring events to life. If diaries are to achieve immortality, the diarist must be a first-class writer. Channon passes that with flying colours.

—— Lord Lexden , House Magazine

Better than any history or histories of these two decades . . . like a fusion of Debrett's and the Almanach de Gotha . . . Scrupulously scholarly . . . Simon Heffer has done a great service by revealing in this extraordinary new edition of the Channon diaries the decadence and complacency of the English political and upper classes.

—— Denis Macshane , The Tablet

The abundant footnotes . . . swarm with everything you might want to know about the British aristocracy between the wars . . . It's like reading Bertie Wooster set loose among the pages of Burke's Peerage, with lots of sucking-up where the jokes ought to be . . . His pen portraits of friends and rivals alike are etched in acid.

—— Anthony Quinn , Observer

The fascinating, unexpurgated interwar diaries of the Tory MP and social alpinist Henry "Chips" Channon, who met everyone who was anyone from Hitler to kings, the Pope and the Mitfords. Bonking, snobbery and bitchy remarks abound in this big beast of a book.

—— Times

I did enjoy the Chips Channon diaries, the new first volume. My most pleasurable reading experiences are diaries and letters. History unfiltered, not refracted through a historian's imagination. The Chips Channon diaries bring alive a section of society in the 20s and 30s with great vividness.

—— Robert Harris

Chips Channon wrote witheringly about everyone-except Hitler. But his diaries still make for strangely addictive reading . . . [Simon Heffer] has done a superb job.

—— Chris Mullin , Prospect Magazine

These unabridged, risqué, waspish, snobbish, social-climbing diaries have been worth the wait . . . All credit to Simon Heffer for his masterly editing and annotation.

—— The Field

The diaries are indeed indispensable for anyone seriously interested in the political and social history of interwar Britain.

—— History Today

Brilliantly and painstakingly edited by Simon Heffer. The enlarged Channon diaries have rightly attracted a great deal of attention . . . they are more detailed and more frank, and maybe more honest, about the opinions and sexual escapades of some of the leading figures in British politics and high society in the years between the world wars.

—— UnHerd

It sounds perverse to say that Channon's snobberies and prejudices make the diaries, but the unabashed exposure of these failings gives you an oddly impressive picture of a person in the setting of his time - the picture, I mean, is absorbing, whatever the subject's shortcomings. And though this colossal self-portrait describes much that's misguided, vain, and idiotic, it prompts you too to imagine those perishable qualities that history and biography so often fail to capture: the charm, generosity, personal magnetism, and brilliance of conversation that must have explained and sustained Chips's progress, the "success after success" that the diaries record and celebrate.

—— Alan Hollinghurst , New York Review of Books

One of the most talked about books of this year . . . compelling and significant.

—— Caroline Knox , The Scotsman

Channon's jaw-dropping account, lovingly curated by the historian and former Mail writer Simon Heffer, is compelling.

—— Daily Mail, Best Books for Summer

Delicious, dangerous and utterly compulsive.

—— The Week

Dripping with bons mots, anecdote and scandal, [these] are addictive, even if they elicit repulsion as well as delight.

—— Daily Telegraph, Best Summer Books

A momentous publishing event. Candid, unabashed, vivid and manifold. They will be prized for their powerful evocation of social milieux . . . Heffer's footnotes are always informative, just and accurate, often amusing, and can seldom be faulted.

—— Richard Davenport-Hines , TLS

An unadulterated masterpiece . . . A larder of quotable treats.

—— Sasha Swire , Tatler

Scintillating wit, memorable descriptions and compelling gossip. Heffer has done a magnificent job. Riveting.

—— Leo McKinstry , Daily Express

Whatever you think of him Channon ranks among the great diarists. He is at turns brilliant, witty, trivial and spiteful, with observations about some figures whose names have stood the test of time. Simon Heffer has done an excellent job as editor and his copious footnotes are often as entertaining as the diaries.

—— The Quarterly Review

An inspired diarist. After devouring this volume readers will be salivating for the next.

—— Andrew Roberts , The Critic
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