A century of war reporting

At the age of 100, Clare Hollingworth longs to be back on the battlefield, said Neil Tweedie in the London Telegraph. As the Telegraph’s war correspondent, she covered almost every major conflict of the mid-20th century, filing stories from the deserts of North Africa during World War II and the jungles of Vietnam in the 1960s.

Hollingworth’s first scoop came while on assignment in Poland in August 1939. Returning from a trip into Germany to buy supplies, she noticed that large fabric screens had been erected along the roadside. “Suddenly, a great gust of wind blew the sacking from its moorings,” she recalls. “I looked into the valley and saw scores, if not hundreds, of tanks.” Hollingworth had stumbled on the opening gambit of WWII. Three days later, the Panzers rolled into Poland. She spent the rest of the war dashing around Africa and Europe.

“I must admit I enjoy being in a war,” she says. “I’m not brave, I just enjoy it.” She still keeps her passport handy, just in case. If she were younger, she says, “I should look through the papers and say, ‘Where’s the most dangerous place to go?’ Because it always makes a good story.”

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