Who remembers Chips Channon? Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon was an American born Conservative MP, a Bright Young Thing, and a marvellously indiscreet diarist. Or so he is alleged to have been. His diaries have never been published in full, so scandalous was their content — particularly of his promiscuous liaisons with many of the great men of the day. The editor of the expurgated version (1967), Robert Rhodes James, remarked that the Great and the Good shuddered when told that Channon had a kept a diary.
The word is that the diaries are soon to be published in full, although this has been a frequent rumour over the years. I hope that it’s true. Nancy Mitford apparently saw excised excerpts of the diary sometime after Channon’s death in 1958 and concluded that he was ‘black and sinister’, which is a perverse advert for their publication.
Another intriguing possibility is a book about Lydia Corbett — one of Picasso’s last surviving muses. The precise nature of their relationship in 1954 remains elusive. She is adamant that it was only ever Platonic and artistic, while various people still suggest that she had to rebuff Picasso’s advances, which apparently explains why her then boyfriend travelled to the South of France. The innuendo is rather distasteful, especially as there is no reason to doubt Corbett’s word, whatever Picasso’s Casanovan tendencies.
An exhibition of Corbett’s work is showing at the Francis Kyle Gallery off Regent Street, a modest counterpoint to Picasso & Modern British Art at Tate Britain. The renewed proximity of artist and model stoked rumours that a book was to be written about their relationship. It seems that no such book has been authorised, which is a shame in many ways. The sex, or lack of it, is a titillating sideshow. But it’s a pity that there won’t (yet) be a study of Picasso and his coterie, which at that time included Jean Cocteau and Marc Chagall, from the perspective of the young woman who briefly captivated them.
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