Clare Hollingworth

Clare Hollingworth0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a journalist. Since the start of the Second World War, she's been a close companion to action and danger, working for, among others, the Daily Telegraph, The Express, The Guardian, and the Sunday Times. She broke the news of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 and narrowly escaped capture in Romania as the war progressed. She went on to defy the OAS in Algeria and to name Kim Philby as the third man. She reported from Vietnam in the sixties, Beijing in the seventies. Now, well into her eighties, she can look back on a career full of excitement. But don't let anyone imagine that I'm brave, she says. I'm terrified of being stuck in lifts, but I'm never afraid of being shot at. She is Claire Hollingworth.

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You obviously find danger stimulating, Claire. You have a certain relish for danger, don't you? Yes. I I suppose in a kind of way I enjoy it.

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I enjoy it.

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Shm.

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I enjoy

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Being in

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A plane that's bombing something.

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or being on the ground in the desert when they're

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Advancing.

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I'm terribly interested in

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War in strategy and in tactics as well. But there's no thought for your own life in those moments. I don't think about at that time, no. But I've read that one of your colleagues talked about you're together walking across a rickety bridge in India with bullets and shells whizzing past your head, you know, and you your eyes shining and you saying, This is what makes life worth living. Yes, I do sometimes feel like that. Ver frequently in the past have done, yes. But why? Have you ever afterwards thought about why do I get such a kick out of this?

Clare Hollingworth2:06

Shells

Clare Hollingworth2:09

And you

Clare Hollingworth2:13

Obviously.

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Well, I suppose why do people get a kick out of uh watching a football match? I I that would bore me still. But you're not exactly dicing with death at a football match. Well, I can only tell you that that's my form of

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interest and I can't tell you quite why I'm not frightened.

Clare Hollingworth2:40

Dung.

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Because there are other stories about you going, I think, in Algeria in the sixties, you know, which was a very dangerous place to be, going into the Kasbah where no other man would go. Well, it was much safer for a woman than a man. Why? I went into the Kasbah almost every day.

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got a lot of information from my Algerian friends, but I had a bit of problems. I mean, they never shot me or shot at me.

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um and never hit me, but they threw slops over my head and various unpleasant things like that. I had to rush back to the hotel to have a quick shower before I could look at my own hair. So you're always ready to go anywhere. Rumour has it that you

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You used to sleep on the floor regularly to prepare yourself for uncomfortable living out of the way. Well, I can sleep on the floor very easily, and I do occasionally sleep on the floor just to see that I still can easily. You still sleep on the floor in preparation?

Clare Hollingworth3:32

Well

Clare Hollingworth3:41

Occasionally

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Tell me about your first record. Well, I would like to take to my island the Nightingales Sang in Berkeley Square, because the records I want on the island are those that will remind me of happy or interesting or dangerous times in my life. And The Nightingales Sang in Berkeley Square.

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used to be played in the inner s square of Shepherd's Hotel every night, where they had a dinner dance. This is in Cairo. This was in Cairo.

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And Shepherd's was the hotel then for officers. And they always paid the Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square towards the end.

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Which is one colonel once said to me, It reminds us that we've got to be at our desks before eight tomorrow morning.

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That certain night, the night we met, There was magic on in the air There were angels dining at the writs

Speaker 34:51

And the nightingales sang in Barkley Square.

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Virulin singing and Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. The scoop that began it all, of course, Clare, was the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which signalled the beginning of World War Two. You were a young woman of 27 in her first journalistic job with the Daily Telegraph, and of all places, you were on the Polish border. How did you discover that the Nazis were about to roll in?

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was staying with the British Consul General, who is an old friend.

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And I

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knew the border was closed.

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But it was open to flagged cars to enable the Germans to get into Poland.

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So I said to him,'May I borrow your car'? and he said,'Where do you want to go, old girl'? Everybody was old girl then. And so I said,'I want to go into Germany' and he said,'Aren't you a funny old girl? Of course you can borrow the car.

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The Border Guard were a bit surprised when they saw the Union Jack flying, but they let me in. You were driving, my I was driving, and I bought aspirin and white wine and things you couldn't get then inside Poland or in that part of Poland.

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And then I was driving back along a valley, and there was Hessian screen up, so you couldn't look down into the valley, and suddenly there was a great gust of wind, which blew the Hessian sacking from its moorings, and I looked down into the valley and saw scores

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if not hundreds of tanks.

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So when I got back I said thank you for lending me your car. He said Where did you go, old girl? So I said I went into Germany. He said stop being funny. So I said well look at the boot and you'll see the things I bought there. And what's more, I've got a very good story. The tanks are already lined up.

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For invasion of Poland. Did he believe you? And he of course he believed me.

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and he went upstairs and sent a top secret message to the Foreign Office. I rang Hugh Carlton Green, who is my boss in Warsaw.

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And we sent a story. There were no bylines in those days. So you didn't get it you didn't get any credit for it then, your name was on the front page it said from our own correspondents in Silesia or in Katowice.

Clare Hollingworth7:15

So you didn't get it.

Clare Hollingworth7:17

Name did not.

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And then

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Three days later, they came in on the first of September. The tanks rolled in.

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And I remember telephoning to Robin Hankey at the embassy in Washington and saying, Robin, the war's begun. He said, Rubbish, they're still negotiating. So I said, Can't you hear it? and I put the telephone out of the window so he could hear the tanks rolling in.

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Record number two.

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I should like to hear it would remind me of those days, Deutschlandeuberalis.

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It's not my favourite tune because I'm not I didn't feel very pro-German, but it does bring back terrific members.

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Part of the German national anthem, performed by the North West German Radio Choir and Orchestra.

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It's war that fascinates you, as you've said, Claire the the the paraphernalia, the aeroplanes, the tanks, the guns, and the strategy. What are the origins of that interest, do you think, in you?

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I've always been my when we were small children my father used to take us to the Battle of Bosworth Field and when I was very small in World War One we lived on a farm near Charnwood Forest and I used to hear every day people talking about the war and I remember towards the end of the war seeing Germans fly over and bomb Loughborough and I remember driving in to Loughborough to see the damage and I should say from World War One having heard all these people talking about the war and the battles all the I did become extremely interested in warfare. But d did you ever think you'd do anything with it or was it just a a hobby? Oh, I it was one of my interests in life. And yes, I did think I'd do something with it, but I th I did think at an early age of being a correspondent. Did you? How early? I should say

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when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Because that was not. My parents o opposed the idea. They thought it was frightful, lower orders, to be a reporter. I remember somebody saying to me, You don't want to be a reporter or a correspondent. That's a tradesman entrance job. But I wanted to be a journalist and I got some kind of job with the paper that was then the Liberal paper that became the News Chronicle.

Clare Hollingworth9:54

I'm not sure if I can do it.

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and they sent me up to Poland.

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And when I got there, instead of reporting anything, I got bogged down

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very willingly, I may say, in the work that the Fund, the News Chronicle, or whatever the paper was then called, was raising for refugees

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Jews, Catholics, Communists, who were leaving Germany and coming into Poland illegally.

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And I worked very, very hard on this, up and down, forgot about being a journalist completely. But eventually you realized nothing more could be done for these refugees. War was inevitable. What did you do? I told this to everybody and eventually resigned, flew home.

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And I got a job then from the editor of the Telegraph sitting in a wonderful panelled office to go to Poland and report to Hugh Carlton Greene, who had been the telegraph correspondent in Berlin and had been thrown out and he was operating in Warsaw. And who was of course to become the Director General of the BBC, but

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Let's pause there. Tell me about your third record.

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Moonlight on the Ganges will remind me of

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The Baltimores.

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And car.

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As so many of these dance tunes do.

Speaker 411:44

Moonlight on the gain.

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My little handle

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When I whispered it's love's sweet melody

Speaker 411:59

All our dreams and our schemes came true.

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Someday on the Ganges

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I'll meet you.

Speaker 412:15

Yeah.

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Smith Baloo and the Glen Miller Orchestra and Moonlight on the Ganges. You have an appetite for danger, obviously. You also have a sense of duty because you're after the story, you're after the facts, aren't you? But is there something else as well? You just like travelling around. You have a kind of innate wanderlust.

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Oh yes, I do like travelling around, and I'm sorry the parts of the world I haven't yet seen.

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I haven't been south of Belize in South America.

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And I I haven't been further south, I think, than oh, I have just been south of the Sudan, but I don't really know South Africa either. I think there's a there's an Arabic phrase, isn't there, that uh that that people have people who have a need to smell the breezes. Yes, I I the my one of my favourite phrases is smelling the breezes. Not only going to Egypt or Libya or Rome, but I like to smell the breezes here. And the modern journalist, the real modern up-to-date journalist, works at a computer all the time. They don't go to press conferences, they just get all the correct information from the

Clare Hollingworth13:02

See ya.

Presenter13:29

The computer. Personally, I still like to be at the press conference. I like to smell the breezes that you can't get from the computer. But if they get it right although they're sitting at their computers, what does it matter? It doesn't. Doesn't it?

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Ah, well, that's what they say, and I have to admit it is the modern form of journalism.

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But it's not how you've ever done it. You've never stayed at your desk, and indeed, in nineteen forty one you were often at the front in the desert, which must have been pretty hair raising on occasions.

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Now I remember one night I was sleep I we all slept a good distance from one another because of, you know, bombing or whatever.

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Sleeping in the sand is comfortable. You make a hole for your hips and put something down under your head and you're fine. And I was sleep sleeping well, but suddenly I was woken up by the sound of German voices and the sweat I was so frightened the sweat came out and all the sand stuck to my body and then I heard the truck drive away.

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Woof.

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And at breakfast of bully beef and biscuits, I said something like, Did anybody hear the German voices in the night? And the colonel said, Absolute rubbish, Colonel

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idiotic things you say. And two of his staff said, Oh, sir, we were woken up by a German truck that came very near over that dune over there. You were right. And they didn't see us.

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More music.

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I'd very much like to hear Roumanian Carnival because that is one of the tunes that brings back into my mind the life in Roumania.

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Max Jaffa and his trio playing a part of Rumanian Carnival.

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You've always contended, Clare, that you've never used your femininity to win favours. I think that's not totally true, because there was an occasion in Roumania, I think, in'forty one, wasn't there, when the security police knocked at your bedroom door? Oh, well, I suppose that was in a way. I mean, I was very unpopular in Roumania. I'd been thrown out once, but they'd given me a visa and I'd got back. And I was living alone in a little flat. And um

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One day the bell went and I looked through the the little

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window we had to see who was there. And I saw they were obviously security people or police. So I took off I just had had a bath and just got dressed, so I took off the thing I said

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You can't come in because I'm undressed.

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And then I ran through to Robin Hanke.

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And said Robin,

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Somebody says come round to arrest me, come and rescue me. I've said I've taken off all my clothes so they can't take me out naked.

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Robin came and rescued me.

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Record number five.

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I very much hope to hear the Marcios.

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It's got so many memories, but strangely enough, the most important one is in Algers.

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Well

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Uh the French had already

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reoccupied much of the country after the war.

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And I was with an American correspondent, with just the two of us, with De Gaulle, who was doing a tour of what you might call market towns or small towns in Algiers, and we noticed a crowd collecting in the market place just behind us.

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uh people shouting La Bar de Gaulle etcetera down with de Gaulle.

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And he walked out into this hostile crowd.

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and he talked to them.

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And gradually they warmed up.

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His hands were bleeding.

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where people have been trying to kiss his hands.

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It was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life. To see a hostile crowd transformed by the personality of one man.

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La Marseillaise, the French national anthem performed by the choir and orchestra of the Toulouse Capitol, conducted by Michel Plasson.

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So many tales of daring do, um, Clare Hollingworth, in your career. I I should add, if you don't mind my saying, that you're not exactly Amazonian physically, are you? What are you? Five feet, if that? Five two, I think. Five two. Five two and a half.

Clare Hollingworth19:34

Night.

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But but but not a large figure, do you cut? I t I'm very careful. I don't eat very much.

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Try to keep small. But, um, in Algiers in nineteen sixty two, despite your diminutive stature, I'm told that you

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took on in the Aletti Hotel one evening the the the murderous and ruthless OAS. Tell me what happened. Well, I think John Wallace, who was

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was there as well. I think he deserves as much, if not mu more credit than I. He was the telegraph man. He was the telegraph man. But the OAS ha had come, as I understand it, uh to take captive an Italian journalist and do with him heaven knows what, but you two tried to stop them taking him.

Clare Hollingworth20:08

But he resisted.

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John

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Got hold of him and said, How can we stop him? And so I said, Let's all go with him because they can't.

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Puts us all in prison. They can't murder us all, so we'll all go with him. And that saved him. But hadn't you first of all threatened to hit them the OAS man over the head with your shoe? Yes, I did say I hadn't got any obviously I hadn't got any gun. But I said if you take this man away further, I shall hit you over the head with my shoe. But is that, would you say?

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The nearest you've come to chancing your life in the course of duty, or have you had closer shaves than that?

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I've had many.

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Um

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I suppose I've had many S. I just don't know when how near the shop is or whatever. I forget about it afterwards, but I don't know how

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Lucky I was. I suppose I now realize I was very lucky. And am I right in thinking that that in all of this career you've never taken time off except once, and that was when your husband was ill?

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Uh that was when I was in in Vietnam, and it's the only time I've e I was working for the Guardian. It's the only time I've ever asked for personal reasons to go home.

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Geoffrey was ill.

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and uh came over t to London and he had an operation

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And

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died in the Edward the Seventh Hospital. And you went straight back out to war again, I think. And then I went after the funeral, the editor sent me back to Algiers, not to Vietnam.

Clare Hollingworth21:54

I

Presenter22:00

And you've always said that was a a great favour that editor did for you. Well, I think it was very kind of him to get rid I mean, most people would have said, Well, now sit around and deal with all your letters and so on. He said, Get out, get back. It was very kind'cause it kept the tears away.

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Record number six

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The East is red.

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Uh I remember f hearing first, I suppose it was in

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In 197 when I went into Peking from Hong Kong with the first ambassadors, Sir John Ardis.

Speaker 422:50

We now destroy

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Dong fang hong. The East is red. We've we've mentioned um some of your scoops, Clare, but one which took months to see the light of day, although it was all the time on the desk at the Guardian, was your story that Kim Philby was the third man and that he'd defected to the Soviet Union. That was in nineteen sixty three.

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You'd known Philby on and off since the thirties, hadn't you? Did you like him? Well, I I found him sl no. I like is too strong. Well, pleasant company. I mean amusing company. Very charming. The first time I met him was at a very grand ball.

Clare Hollingworth23:35

John

Presenter23:39

The date is very precise. At midnight my husband kissed me on both cheeks and said happy birthday, darling.

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And Philby from nearby said, I heard that. We're twins.

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So I assumed his birthday was like mine on the tenth of October.

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And when I broke the story of his departure from

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Um

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the west to the east. The only thing I got wrong.

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was the date of his birth. Typical Philby, everything should gain intimacy, but never mind a few lies.

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And uh were you aware all of that?'Cause I know you were from quite early on, I think from when Burgess and MacLean went in the early fifties, you were convinced Philby was the third man, weren't you? My husband and I lived.

Speaker 424:29

In the early 50s. You were convinced Philby was the third man, weren't you?

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Next door to the Maclean's and

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We had a fairly sort of intimate relationship with the Macleans. They came in and

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We went in there from time to time, and I remember one of the servants saying sit, which the Arabic for madam.

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Please stop mister McLean coming upstairs, because when he does he chases the boys.

Speaker 425:00

Huh.

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But uh w it was w Philby came and stayed with them. He and Donald used to spend half the day or all the day drinking. And one day they did this.

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and then went to a party at Abdene Palace, to which Donald had been invited.

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and they were all, instead of being in evening dress, they were in dirty clothes they'd been drinking with all day. Donald was told by the ambassador he must leave, and had to leave the next day because the palace had complained about his behaviour.

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And I remember l my next door neighbour leaving and Philby saying, Bye bye, I'm lucky to be a journalist and not a diplomat. Nobody's throwing me out.

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Now eventually he took on an old job of yours, in fact, as Middle East correspondent in Beirut for The Observer and The Economist, which is where you were as well, and and and by this time he's said to have looked like a a tired adventurer with a with a drink problem.

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M

Presenter26:04

But one night in January 1963 he disappeared. Yes.

Clare Hollingworth26:07

Yeah.

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Uh um he was invited to a party.

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uh inc which included fr American friends of mine.

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And he didn't turn up.

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And Eleanor, his wife, arrived and said, Um, I'm sorry, Kim, uh can't he'll be coming late. He's just gone to file a piece to the

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Economist, and he never showed up. And this American friend of mine escorted Eleanor back to their flat in Beirut, and he wasn't there. And then time passed, and everyone was w where is Kim? And the

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Beirut officials said he'd never left the Lebanon.

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and uh nobody had heard of him arriving anywhere else. And I then just by accident, I admit, I was looking it through a boring magazine about shipping in Beirut, and I saw a list of ships, and I saw that a ship had left Beirut.

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For Odessa

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at the time he disappeared from this dinner.

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I then made some inquiries and discovered he hadn't been on the ship. They knew all the people who was on the ship. He wasn't on it.

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So they said officially. But

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A drunken Russian sailor, very, very drunk, was found on the steps.

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And the card he'd been given to have a day off in Beirut was handed in. So I assumed immediately that that card had been given to Kim Philby, who was now in Russia. And you wrote that story? And I wrote that story. You filed it to the Guardian? I filed it. And how did they react? They didn't f use it at all.

Clare Hollingworth28:00

And I wrote that sign.

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The editor said, Claire, we sh we can't wouldn't dream of using a story. MacMillan has said repeatedly he's not repeat not the third man. Record number seven.

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Well, I recall this as one of my favorite pieces of classical music.

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And I associate it with

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Sir Edward Heath's eightieth birthday.

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where I attended one of the best concerts of my life.

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In Salisbury Cathedral.

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And this was my favourite piece in that concert.

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The opening of Schubert's Symphony No. eight, The Unfinished, played by the B B C Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Sargent. Where do you live now, Claire, and how much do you work?

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I live

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Here, I've got a little flat in Dorset Square. I'm only here for a month or two every year.

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And I live really my in

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um a bed set, it's called a flat, in Hong Kong.

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And I

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work a bit in the university and take a course of journalism there.

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And I work

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I suppose a

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Back up for the Sunday Telegraph and give any help I can for them. And your interest in world affairs is obviously undimmed. More. I'm more interested than I've ever been now. It's harder work for you these days, though, isn't it, to remain well informed because your eyesight is not as good as it was. How do you? My eyesight is not only not as good as it was. I can't read anything le except headlines. But I have.

Clare Hollingworth30:37

Do you know my eyesight?

Presenter30:47

Very, very kind. Um woman with almost professorial rank reads to me every morning by telephone from half past seven till a quarter past eight. How do you think that you will cope on a desert island? Because you will be necessarily, I would have thought, confined to a few square miles and no news from the outside.

Presenter31:08

No news from the outside.

Clare Hollingworth31:10

Yeah.

Presenter31:11

Aha. Well, I don't think I should enjoy it. I suppose if there's nothing else to do, one would just have to obviously accept it. One wouldn't commit suicide. And you're good at sleeping on sand, of course. And I could sleep perfectly well, yes. But uh um it would be difficult. I suppose there'd be some

Presenter31:30

vegetables around to eat. I don't know how quite how I'd make out, but I should try.

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Last record.

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Land of Hope and Joy is going to be played. It's very

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very much the hymn of my childhood. I don't think my father was a very good pianist, but he could play Land of Hope and Glory and frequently did. And my sister and I sang Land of Hope and Glory as children.

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during the First World War. And uh I remember that wider still and wider may thy bounds be stretched. God who made thee mighty, make thee mighty

Speaker 432:26

We explore

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The London Symphony Chorus, singing part of Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory, with the Northern Symphonia, conducted by Richard Hickox. If you could only take one of those eight records, Claire, I wonder which one it would be.

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I should think the one that would make me happiest and s best tempered would be the unfinished symphony. The Schubert.

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And um what about a book that you might like to take? We already have there waiting for you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can put one more on top of the pile. What would it be?

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European History

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Or Trevelyan, Trevelyan's h English history. Trevelyan's history of England. Yeah.

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And what about your luxury?

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My first thought was Champagne and Cavier Unlimited.

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Now I knew I didn't want to be in a blas state, even if I am on a desert island. Be quite nice though, wouldn't it? But I I think my real th would be unlimited qu quantities of good hard

Clare Hollingworth34:07

Yeah.

Presenter34:15

Paper and unlimited quantities of pens with thick nibs. Claire Hollingworth, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Clare Hollingworth34:31

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.