Clare Hollingworth
Clare Hollingworth | |
|---|---|
| Born | 10 October 1911 |
| Died | 10 January 2017 (aged 105) Hong Kong, People's Republic of China |
| Occupation | Journalist |
Clare Hollingworth (10 October 1911 – 10 January 2017) was an English journalist and author, who was the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II, described as "the scoop of the century".[1] A rookie reporter for The Daily Telegraph in 1939, she spotted German forces massed on the Polish border, while travelling from Poland to Germany. She later helped rescue thousands of people from Hitler's forces by arranging British visas.[2]
Early life
Hollingworth was born in Knighton, south of Leicester, in 1911.[3] In World War I, her father took over the running of his father's footwear factory, and they moved to a farm near Shepshed.[3] She showed an early interest in becoming a writer, against opposition from her mother, and visited historical battlefield sites in Britain and France with her father.[4] After leaving school, Hollingworth attended a domestic science college in Leicester, which she did not enjoy.[3][4] She became engaged to the son of local family known to her own, but instead of marriage, went to work as secretary to the League of Nations Union (LNU) Worcestershire organiser. She then won a scholarship to London's School of Slavonic Studies, and later, a place at Zagreb University to study Croatian.[3]
Career
Hollingworth started to write articles on a freelance basis for the New Statesman.[4] After the German invasion of the Sudetenland of 1938, she went to Warsaw, working with Czech refugees.[4]
In August 1939, Hollingworth had been working as a Daily Telegraph journalist for less than a week when she was sent to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. Hollingworth persuaded the British Consul-General in Katowice, John Anthony Thwaites, to lend her his chauffeured car for a fact-finding mission into Germany.[5] While driving along the German–Polish border on 28 August, Hollingworth chanced upon a massive build-up of German troops, tanks and armoured cars facing Poland. On 1 September, Hollingworth called the British embassy in Warsaw to report the German invasion of Poland. To convince doubtful embassy officials, Hollingworth held a telephone out of the window of her room to capture the sounds of German forces.[5] Hollingworth's eyewitness account was the first report the British Foreign Office received about the invasion of Poland.[3]
During the following decades, Hollingworth reported on conflicts in Palestine, Algeria, China, Aden and Vietnam.[3] Her BBC obituary states that, although she was not the earliest woman war correspondent, "her depth of technical, tactical and strategic insight set her apart."[4] In 1946 she was among the survivors of the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem that killed 91 people.[6] In the 1970s she was based in Beijing.[1]
John Simpson described her as the reporter who first interviewed the Shah of Iran, and, decades later, who last interviewed him too: "She was the only person he wanted to speak to".[7]
She was the author of five books: The Three Weeks' War in Poland (1940), There's a German Right Behind Me (1945), The Arabs and the West (1950), Mao (1985), and her memoirs, Front Line (1990, updated with Neri Tenorio in 2005).
Personal life
Hollingworth was married twice. She married Vandeleur Robinson, the League of Nations Union (LNU) regional organiser in the south-east, in 1936[3] and they divorced in 1951. She then married Geoffrey Hoare in 1951. Hoare died in 1965. Hollingworth had a stepdaughter from her second marriage.[8]
By 1939, Hollingworth was selected to fight the parliamentary seat of Melton for the Labour Party in the general election that was due to take place by 1940.[9] Because of the outbreak of war the election was postponed, and by the 1945 election a different Labour candidate had been chosen.
From the early 1980s, Hollingworth lived in Hong Kong. For a long time she was a near-daily visitor to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong, where she was an honorary goodwill ambassador.[3] She celebrated her 100th birthday there on 10 October 2011.[10]
In 2006 Hollingworth sued her financial manager, fellow Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club member Thomas Edward Juson (also known as Ted Thomas), for the removal of nearly $300,000 from her bank account.[11] Juson defended his actions as investments, but agreed to repay the money in 2007. He had not yet done that in late 2011.[12][13]
In 2016, Hollingworth's great-nephew, Patrick Garrett, published a biography of her, Of Fortunes and War: Clare Hollingworth, First of the Female War Correspondents.[14] In October 2016 in Hong Kong she marked her 105th birthday.[15][16] She died there on 10 January 2017.[1]
Awards and honours
Hollingworth won the James Cameron Award for Journalism (1994).[1] In 1999, she received a lifetime achievement award from the UK television programme What the Papers Say.[1]
Bibliography
- The Three Weeks' War in Poland (1940), Duckworth ASIN B000XFSXEM
- There's a German Just Behind Me (1945), Right Book Club ASIN B0007J5R3Y
- The Arabs and the West (1952), Methuen ASIN B00692G566
- Mao and the Men Against Him (1984), Jonathan Cape ISBN 9780224017602
- Front Line (memoirs) (1990), Jonathan Cape ISBN 9780224028271
References
- ^ a b c d e "Clare Hollingworth: British war correspondent dies aged 105". BBC News. 10 January 2017.
- ^ Hutton, Alice (10 October 2016). "105-year-old thanked by woman she rescued during WW2". BBC News. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Addley, Esther (16 January 2004). "A foreign affair". The Guardian.
- ^ a b c d e "Obituary: Clare Hollingworth". 10 January 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
- ^ a b Moore, Malcolm (30 August 2009). "Second World War 70th anniversary: The Scoop". Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 16 November 2012.
- ^ Segev, Tom (4 September 2009). "Scoop of the century". Haaretz.
- ^ Lo Dico, Joy (9 October 2015). "The woman who broke the news of WW2". London Evening Standard. p. 16.
- ^ Hollingworth, Clare (1990). Front Line. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-02827-8.
- ^ Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party, 1939
- ^ Evans, Annemarie (10 October 2011). "WWII scoop journalist Clare Hollingworth turns 100". BBC News. Retrieved 12 October 2011.
- ^ "HK reporter famous for World War II scoop in legal spat". The Taipei Times. 4 May 2006. p. 5.
- ^ Hartley, Emma (22 October 2009). "Doyenne of war correspondents parted from life's savings". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
- ^ "Called to Account". China Daily. 12 October 2011. Retrieved 13 August 2013.
- ^ Lau, Joyce (26 August 2016). "Book review: the life of Clare Hollingworth, war correspondent". The South China Morning Post.
- ^ BBC World News, 11 October 2016
- ^ Foster, Peter (9 October 2015). "Clare Hollingworth, the foreign correspondent who broke news of Second World War, turns 104". Daily Telegraph.
