Clare Hollingworth (born 10 October 1911) is a British journalist and author who is noted as the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II.
Career
On 31 August 1939, Hollingworth had been working as a journalist for less than a week for The Daily Telegraph 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. While driving along the German-Polish border, Hollingworth chanced upon a massive build-up of Nazi German troops, tanks and armoured cars facing Poland. The following morning 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 her room window to capture the sounds of German forces. Hollingworth's eyewitness account was the first report the British Foreign Office had about the invasion of Poland.
During the following decades, Hollingworth reported on conflicts in Palestine, Algeria, China, Aden and Vietnam.
In 1946 she was among the survivors of the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem that killed 91 people.
She is the author of five books: Poland's Three Weeks' War (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 in 1936 and they divorced in 1951. She then married Geoffrey Hoare in 1951. Hoare died in 1965. Hollingworth has one stepdaughter from her second marriage.
Since the early 1980s, Hollingworth has lived in Hong Kong. She is a near-daily visitor to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong, where she is an honorary goodwill ambassador. She celebrated her 100th birthday there on 10 October 2011.
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. Juson defended his actions as investments, but agreed to repay the money in 2007. He had not yet done that in late 2011. Hollingworth turned 100 in October 2011.
Bibliography
- Poland's Three Weeks' War (1940)
- There's a German Right Behind Me (1945)
- The Arabs and the West (1950)
- Mao and the Men Against Him (1984)
- Front Line (memoirs) (1990)