Maisky, ‘the smirking cat’, observed Channon, was ‘leaning over the railing of the ambassadorial gallery and sat so sinister and smug (are we to place our honour, our safety in those blood-stained hands?)’. In his speech to the House, Churchill, briefed in detail over the phone by Maisky about the state of the negotiations, reproached Chamberlain with being guided rather by emotion than by state interests, which called for an alliance with Russia; Rhodes, Chips, p. 199; Maisky, Who Helped Hitler?, pp. 125–6 and letter to The Times, 5 Sep. 1969. On the eve of the debate, Maisky dined with Amery and a dozen members of the ‘Eden Group’ of anti-appeasement backbenchers at the house of General Spears. ‘The little man,’ wrote Amery in his diary, ‘was quite firm on the point that Russia was going to have a black and white alliance or nothing.’ Although Amery commented that he now understood ‘why our ancestors had considered bear-baiting such good sport,’ he found convincing Maisky’s argument that instead of facing up to Nazi Germany, the government was ‘looking over their shoulder the whole time and hanging on to the carcass of the dead policy of appeasement’; Amery papers, diary, AMEL 7/39.