Pioneering Daily Express reporter who broke news of the Second World War

Clare Hollingworth was just 27 and a week into her new job as a foreign correspondent when Germany invaded Poland... her scoop, initially pooh-poohed by officials, launched an incredible 75-year career

- By Patrick Garrett

SLAM! Slam! The noise that woke Clare Hollingworth in the early hours of September 1, 1939, was like doors banging. But when she leapt out of bed she saw aircraft roaring overhead — curious smoke-rings bursting all around them. It wasn’t a noisy neighbour but the outbreak of the Second World War.

Clare, my great-aunt, was in Poland, not far from the German border. She was 27 years old, still in the first week of her very first job as a journalist. She grabbed the telephone and rang her boss in Warsaw.

Hugh Carleton Greene, brother of the novelist Graham Greene and later director-general of the BBC, would describe that call as the “most dramatic moment” of his entire life. But before cabling her report to the editors in London, he called the Polish Foreign Ministry for an official comment.

His contact claimed Claire was talking nonsense. “Negotiations are still going on,” he insisted. “It must be an air-raid practice.”

But before Greene had even put the phone down, sirens in the capital began to wail. Soon, every siren in Warsaw was shrieking. Clare was clearly right — and not only had she been the first correspondent to report the outbreak of the Second World War, she had also broken the news to the Polish government.

“War Correspondent” was not a typical job title for a woman in the 1930s. But Clare Hollingworth always enjoyed being the exception. Born in a Leicester suburb in October 1911, her earliest memories were of her parents Albert and Daisy discussing the latest grim news from the Somme and Western Front. She was only four when a German Zeppelin attacked nearby Loughborough. Her parents took her in a pony cart to see the aftermath. She also recalled singing Rule Britannia, aged seven, with her father at the piano as the church bells rang to mark the end of the Great War.

Although her scoop at the outbreak of the Second World War was for the Daily Telegraph, Clare was soon hired by the Daily Express.