How to make it as a female war correspondent

The year was 1971, and I was the Reuter correspondent in China during Mao’s latter years in the Cultural Revolution.

I was sitting with Clare Hollingworth talking to a rather obese high ranking Chinese army general.  

The said general then had the temerity to say to Clare: “And how old are you, comrade?”  It was a normal enough question to ask in China, and elsewhere in Asia.

Not for Clare Hollingworth. Clare answered in a furious voice: “How DARE you, Sir. How DARE you ask a lady her age.”

The general heaved himself up and slunk shame-facedly away and was not seen again.

There was no messing around with the lady who was first to report the start of the Second World War at the Polish border with Nazi Germany in 1939, and was still producing articles in her later nineties. 

At one stage, Clare came round to our house in Bangkok for dinner. I told her in advance that I had gotten married since I had last seen her in China. 

A ring came to the door and our Thai home help - we all had such luxuries in these days - went to open the door. Clare’s eyesight was already fading fast. She threw herself around the girl, and hugged her, and she hugged very few. She said: “My dear, let me congratulate on getting married to James…

Eventually things were straightened out.

I once went out to Peking airport at night with colleague Jonathan Sharp to meet Clare coming in after a lengthy absence. She chatted at the gate for a while, then said: “What’s happening? Is it a story? Why are you at the airport so late at night?”

She thought we were fibbing when we said we had come to escort her to her hotel.

In fact, at the back of my mind came the thought that Clare, though as gracious as always, would just as soon have struggled home herself, though there were never taxis at the airport, and in Peking only 15 taxis in all in that massive city, and these always gave priority to Albanians. (I always said I was Albanian when I called for transport).   

Clare was good company in China at a time when there were only five Western correspondents there. Now there are hundreds. 

Hong Kong won’t be the same without her.

105 years, not bad, Clare, RIP. ■