Clare Hollingworth

Announced Start of World War 2 



Clare Hollingworth the reporter who announced the start of World War 2 has celebrated her 104th birthday. The war correspondent was brought to New Zealand in 1993 by the National Press Club to speak on the topic of continuing global conflicts.

She discovered in 1939 on the border of Germany and Poland on the German side an immense and camouflaged build up of armour being readied for the subsequent invasion that detonated World War 2. Her telephoned report of this observation to Fleet Street is considered the greatest scoop of the last century.

Her book on her reporting during World War 2 is entitled “There’s A German Right Behind Me.”

She went on to report every war up to and including the Vietnam War. A resident in her later years of Hong Kong, the Foreign Correspondents Club, of which she has long been a stalwart, convened a special commemoration to mark the birthday of its most famous member.

Pictured is Clare Hollingworth in London prior to World War 2, and in Wellington with National Press Club president Peter Isaac. Her appearance in Wellington was the National Press Club’s contribution to the International Year of Women’s Suffrage in 1993.