Chamberlain’s circle found Maisky’s extra-parliamentary activities during the debate repulsive. ‘I saw [Churchill] with Lloyd George, Boothby and Randolph, in a triumphant huddle surrounding Maisky. Maisky, the Ambassador of torture, murder and every crime in the calendar’, recorded Sir Henry Channon in his diary; Rhodes, Chips, p. 192. Nicolson, who was also present, describes the meeting in detail in Nicolson, Diaries, p. 394. Lloyd George’s sardonic criticism of Chamberlain was ineffective. ‘As … I looked down at his red face and white hair,’ Chamberlain reported to his sister, ‘all my bitterness seemed to pass away for I despised him and felt myself the better man’; Self, Chamberlain Diary Letters, IV, p. 401, 1 April 1939.