Book review: Henry ‘Chips’ Channon - The Diaries, 1918-1938

Edited by Simon Heffer, the diaries of the Tory MP and ultimate social climber provide an ‘unrivalled guide’ to society and politics in the interwar years

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon - The Diaries, 1918-1938

Many people think that the raw materials which make our lives so comfortable – from the plastic caps on our toothpaste tubes to the petrol in our cars – are “too boring to dwell on”, said John Arlidge in The Sunday Times. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” In this remarkable book, two journalists take us inside the world of commodity trading – the industry that controls “how oil, plastics and food get from where they are produced to us” – and reveal it to be the “wildest, dirtiest and riskiest business on the planet”. The dominant companies – Cargill, Vitol, Glencore – may not be household names, but they rival Big Tech in their profit-making abilities. The family that owns Cargill, the world’s biggest grain trader, “boasts 14 billionaires”.

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