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Diaries of Tory MP who partied with the Nazis to be released

The forthcoming publication of Sir Henry Channon’s journals include previously censored material deemed too shocking

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The diaries of a Conservative MP who called high-ranking members of the Nazi party he partied with “not the sort of people he’d want to have to dinner” are to be published uncensored and in full.

Sir Henry Channon’s diary was originally published in 1967, but was heavily redacted to exclude any libellous material about public figures who would have still been alive at the time. The diaries will now start from 1918, rather than 1934, and reveal Sir Henry’s close relationship with King Edward VIII.

“There will be people whose reputations will be damaged when this comes out,” the historian Simon Heffer, who is editing the diaries in three volumes, told the Times.

The diaries include accounts of a trip to Berlin in the 1930s for the Olympics and parties attended by high-ranking members of the Nazi party Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Herman Göring.

Sir Henry found the Nazis “not the sort of people he’d want to have to dinner with” — and voiced his fears of what they could do to Britain.

“He sees the Germans as a potentially really nasty threat,” Heffer said. “He’s an appeaser.”

Born in Chicago in 1897, Sir Henry moved to Britain in the 1920s and was elected to Parliament as the member for Southend West in 1935. He died in 1958 and was succeeded in his seat by his son, Paul Channon, who went on to become a cabinet minister for Margaret Thatcher.

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