Legend: Clare Hollingworth who has died aged 105 was a role model and an inspiration. That’s the woman who got the scoop of the century.
Clare Hollingworth got scoop of the century in World War II
Whenever, in the past few decades, Clare Hollingworth, who has died aged 105, appeared in the Telegraph offices from some warmer part of the world, there would always be heard a voice in the newsroom of someone explaining to a younger member of staff :“That’ s the woman who got the scoop of the century — the beginning of the Second World War.”
She looked an improbable war correspondent, barely five foot tall, with large thick spectacles, dressed in a safari suit of forget-me-not blue. But her bird-like frame had a toughness about it as if made of imperishable juniper roots. It was completely believable that she would sleep on the floor every few days just to keep herself from getting soft.
Clare’s scoop was two scoops really. By determination and guile she had “borrowed” the British consul’s car and driven into Germany from Poland in late August 1939. A petite, dreamy-looking woman of 27, she peered out from behind the wheel of the car with its Union flag flying on the bonn et .“A young girl—perfectly harmless,” she imagined the border guards saying to themselves.
But in a German valley she found tanks masked by hessian screens massed on the border. This revelation made the front page on August 29 under the headline “1,000 tanks massed on Polish frontier. 10 divisions reported ready for swift stroke”. It was bylined “From our own correspondent”.
Then in Katowice, Poland, on September 1, she was woken before dawn by anti-aircraft guns and saw from her bedroom window German bombers flying over from the west. Even then, the Polish authorities in Warsaw did not believe her, and, in order to convince a diplomat at the British embassy, she hung the telephone receiver out of the window so that he could heart he sounds of hostilities for himself.
Clare Hollingworth’s account of the incident was nonchalant on the surface, but clearly she relished the drama of her part in history.
The War in North Africa, civil war in Greece, war in Algeria, war in Vietnam, cold war in China — she always remained ready to leave immediately, passport up to date and shoes by the side of the bed.
It was not that she was the first woman war correspondent. In 1897, for example, The Daily Telegraph had signed up Mary Frances Billington, who rambled the war-torn North-West Frontier and reported from the Western Front in the First World War.
But the key to Clare’s career was the single-minded tenacity with which she pursued it. “At 105 we had begun to wonder if Clare was one of the immortals,” her great-nephew and biographer Patrick Garrett said. “She got a cold around Christmas. We assumed she’d fight it off but it was to be her last Christmas. She was far from home but she’d been abroad most of her life.”
There was much from her life that she had not told her old colleagues. It was only with the publication last year of Patrick Garrett’s biography that the full story emerged of the thousands of Jewish refugees in 1939 that she helped look after and find British visas for.
“Clare Hollingworth was an inspiration to all reporters, but in particular to subsequent generations of women foreign correspondents,” said Chris Evans, the editor of the Telegraph. “She will always be revered by all of us at The Telegraph. Our sympathies to her friends and family.”
Charles Moore, editor of The Daily Telegraph 1995-2003, said: “She got the scoop of the 20th century and combined a professional determination to dig out world news with a practical compassion for the sufferings of humanity.
“During the Cold War, when China was a closed society under Mao, Clare was highly unusual among journalists in having the contacts that opened up some of that world to her, and so to the readers.”
Kate Adie, the veteran BBC war correspondent, said: “I remember going to the Foreign Correspondents club in Hong Kong and someone saying: ‘There’s a legend upstairs.’
“She was a role model, without being aware of it — in the sense that she loved the job and had a terrific zest for journalism right to the end of her life.”
“She was amazing, steadfast,” said Robert Fox, the foreign and war correspondent. “After the Falklands, I remember she took me to lunch and asked me about the state of the British Army.
“She took a great deal of interest in younger reporters. She never put on side, but regarded old and young in the whole business as kindred spirits.”
The BBC’s John Simpson said: “She was a journalist people trusted. She interviewed the Shah of Iran in 1941, just after we had put him on the throne, and she was the only person he would speak to before he died—because he trusted her. I considerher one the finest journalists of the 20th century. I shall miss her memory more than I can say.”