Today I would like to pay tribute to one of the women who has inspired my writing and who died today, aged 105.

Clare Hollingworth was one of the most respected war correspondents of the 20^th century. Born in Knighton in Leicestershire on 10^th October 1911, Clare’s father worked in the shoe trade. Clare had a fairly ordinary life as a youngster, and by 1939 she had married and was living in Poland with her husband. She was horrified by what she saw of the Nazi treatment of many groups of people and decided to help, rescuing around 3,000 refugees from Sudetenland (part of Czechoslovakia which had been annexed by Hitler). For some reason the British government was not happy with what she was doing and MI6 persuaded her employer to ‘let her go’. Clare returned to England and decided that she wanted to be a journalist, partly due to stories told to her by her friend Trilby Ewer. Trilby wrote for the Daily Telegraph and arranged an interview there for Clare. She was hired on the spot as a ‘stringer’ (a freelance journalist) working with Hugh Carleton Greene, who was the Telegraph’s correspondent in Berlin.

With her nose for a story Clare headed for Katowice where she borrowed a car from the British consul-general and drove towards the Polish border. The road was full of motorcycle despatch riders who seemed to be incredibly busy, and as she drove Clare passed a long hessian screen which had been put up to stop people looking down into the valley below. With the luck which seemed to follow Clare at times a random gust of wind caught the screen and pulled it back, revealing hundreds of German tanks and other vehicles lined up and ready to invade Poland. 29^th August 1939 was only Clare’s third day as a journalist, but she already had her first headline in a national newspaper when the Telegraph printed her story as the Page One lead.

On 1^st September Clare was woken by anti-aircraft guns as German planes crossed the border into Poland. She immediately telephoned Greene who notified the Polish foreign minister – who didn’t believe him. Clare then phoned officials in the British embassy in Warsaw, who also didn’t believe that war had broken out as Germany and Poland were still negotiating. To prove her point Clare held the phone out of the window so that the embassy official could hear the guns himself!

Clare Hollingworth went on to report throughout the Second World War and other conflicts of the last century including Palestine, China, Algeria and Vietnam. She also broke the story that the British intelligence officer Kim Philby was spying for the Russians. Clare Hollingworth was awarded the OBE in 1982 and as the 1980’s progressed she decided to semi-retire, but retirement never stopped her from following up a story. In 1989, approaching her 80’s, Clare was in Tiananmen Square where she wrote about the Chinese government crack-down on protesters – watching the unfolding story from a lamppost which she had climbed to get a better view!

Clare Hollingworth was a trail blazer for female war correspondents, a woman of drive and ambition whose life is the inspiration for the main character featured in my new series of books. Today is a day to remember a remarkable woman who lived life to the full and will be long remembered.