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Clare Hollingworth

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The Resume

    (October 10, 1911-January 10, 2017)
    Born in Knighton, England, United Kingdom
    Reporter for the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian
    Landed the ‘scoop of the century’ when she reported a massive build-up of German troops along the border with Poland (August 29, 1939), two days before the invasion that started World War II
    Covered World War II and post-WWII conflicts in Palestine, China, Algeria, Yemen and Vietnam
    Wrote the books ‘The Three Weeks’ War in Poland’ (1940), ‘There’s a German Right Beside Me’ (1945), ‘Arabs and the West’ (1950), ‘Mao’ (1985) and ‘Front Line: A Memoir’ (1990)

Why she might be annoying:

    She was able to cross the restricted German-Polish border by borrowing a diplomatic car from the British consul in Katowice, who was her ex-lover.
    She carried a pearl-handled revolver for protection.
    She said she ‘enjoyed being in a war.’
    She dismissed other female war correspondents, such as Martha Gellhorn and Clare Booth Luce, as pampered elitists.

Why she might not be annoying:

    Before becoming a reporter, she was in Central Europe helping to resettle refugees fleeing the parts of Czechoslovakia that had been annexed by Nazi Germany.
    When Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery ordered her removed from the front lines in North Africa, she got herself embedded with the American troops under General Dwight Eisenhower instead.
    She was under fire so often, she learned to identify bullets and shells from their sounds.
    She survived the terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that killed 91 people (July 22. 1946).
    When members of a right-wing French paramilitary group kidnapped a British reporter in Algiers (1962), she rallied a group of foreign correspondents to fight back, declaring ‘They won’t shoot all the world’s press!’ (Proving her right, the soldiers released the hostage and drove off.)
    She broke the story of British spy <21215>Kim Philby<.21215> defecting to the Soviet Union – although the Guardian, fearful of a libel suit, sat on it for three months (1963).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 8 Votes: 12.50% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 6 Votes: 83.33% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 111 Votes: 63.06% Annoying