The Correspondents

"Gripping...One of the best books I have read in years. It is thrilling from the first page to the last."
—Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women
 
The untold history of six revolutionary women who wrote the narrative of the war from their own bold perspective.

On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms with men.
 
The Correspondents follows six remarkable women as their lives and careers intertwined: Martha Gellhorn, who out-scooped her husband, Ernest Hemingway, on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller, who went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz, who hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, a “society girl columnist” turned combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth, the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II; and Helen Kirkpatrick, the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to men.
 
From chasing down sources and narrowly dodging gunfire to conducting tumultuous love affairs and socializing with luminaries like Eleanor Roosevelt, Picasso, and Man Ray, The Correspondents captures both the adversity and the vibrancy of these women’s lives. With her gripping, intimate, and nuanced portrait, Judith Mackrell celebrates these courageous reporters who risked their lives for the scoop.