Celebrated war reporter Clare Hollingworth dies aged 105
Celebrated war reporter Clare Hollingworth dies aged 105
Journalist and author who was first to report outbreak of second world war dies in Hong Kong
Tuesday 10 January 2017 10.38 EST
Clare Hollingworth, the British journalist and author who was the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of the second world war, has died aged 105.
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During her long career she covered many historic events, witnessing conflict in Vietnam, Algeria, the Middle East, India and Pakistan, as well as the Cultural Revolution in China.
She celebrated her 105th birthday in October with family and friends at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) in Hong Kong.
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Hollingworth had been working for the Daily Telegraph for less than a week when she was sent to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. She witnessed the buildup of German troops while she was crossing the Polish-German border in a car borrowed from a British diplomat, and reported it in her first front-page story, with the headline: “1,000 tanks massed on Polish border – Ten divisions reported ready for swift action.”
She had been undertaking charitable work in Poland before she was taken on by the Telegraph as a reporter. Her great-nephew Patrick Garrett, has described how this included working for the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, managing to travel across Nazi Germany to the Polish port of Gdynia to help rescue a party of high-risk refugees from Prague. She also helped arrange British visas for thousands fleeing Hitler.
Once back in London she “ran into the editor of the Daily Telegraph and convinced him to send her back to Poland as a stringer”, Garrett wrote before her 105th birthday.
Hollingworth once said of her illustrious career: “I enjoy action. I enjoy being in a plane when they’re bombing something.”
Born in Leicester, she married twice and wrote five books drawing on her extraordinary experiences as a foreign correspondent.
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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/10/celebrated-war-reporter-clare-hollingworth-dies-aged-105?CMP=twt_gu
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