Journalist who broke the news of the Nazi invasion of Poland
Born: October 10, 1911;
Died: January 10, 2017
CLARE Hollingworth, who has died aged 105, was the British journalist who broke the news of the Nazi invasion of Poland that triggered the outbreak of the Second World War .
She spent much of her career reporting for newspapers in the UK on major conflicts around the world but the scoop that made her famous came when she was a rookie reporter in Poland in 1939.
After borrowing a diplomat's car she drove into German-held territory where she saw tanks, artillery and armoured cars. When the Nazis launched their invasion in September she informed her newspaper and British diplomats, holding the telephone out of the window so they could hear it for themselves.
Hollingworth, then 27, was just three days into her first job in journalism, working as a cub reporter for The Daily Telegraph, a job she landed after a chance encounter with the newspaper's editor earlier that summer.
A year before, the young political activist, who was born in Leicester in 1911, was working with a charity in Europe that helped save thousands of refugees from the Nazis.
She booked a Christmas holiday to Kitzbuhel in Austria in 1938, but instead carried out reconnaissance in the ski resort, acquiring a Nazi-approved visa that would allow her to work for the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia.
Sent to Katowice, she led an operation to help refugees get visas to come to Britain and beyond, interviewing them and verifying their papers, as well as helping them with housing and food.
Documents held at the National Archives at Kew, west London, reveal she wrote scores of letters and telegrams asking for money and approved visas, and it is estimated she helped between 2,000 and 3,000 people get to the UK.
But her work was abruptly shut down in July 1939, with letters from MI5 suggesting there were complaints from those in the corridors of power that "undesirables" such as Germans, Jews and communists were arriving in Britain with visas signed by her.
Hollingworth was also at the centre of another of the great stories of the 20th century - the Cambridge spy ring.
In the early 1960s she became convinced that British spy Kim Philby was part of the spy group that included Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess.
In 1963 she wrote that Philby had defected to Russia, the BBC said, only to have her story for the Guardian put on hold for three months.
During her career Hollingworth reported from conflict zones all around the world, from Palestine to Vietnam, as well as covering the Chinese cultural revolution and the Algerian civil war, and was credited with the first and last interviews with the Shah of Iran.
In an interview with the Telegraph in 2011 she explained her fascination with war, saying: "I'm not brave, I just enjoy it."
Ms Hollingworth had lived in Hong Kong for the last 40 years after working from Beijing in the 1970s. Her death was confirmed by the Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC) of Hong Kong.
Tara Joseph, president of the FCC, added: "We are very sad to hear about Clare's passing. She was a tremendous inspiration to us all and a treasured member of our club. We were so pleased that we could celebrate her 105th birthday with her this past year."
Ms Hollingworth is survived by a stepdaughter from her second marriage.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here