This sensational 1941 memoir of life on wartime Europe’s frontline by a trailblazing female reporter is an ‘unforgettable’ (The Times) rediscovered classic, introduced by Christina Lamb (who calls her ‘the Forrest Gump of journalism’).

Paris as it fell to the Nazis
London on the first day of the Blitz
Berlin the day Germany invaded Poland
Madrid in the Spanish Civil War
Prague during the Munich crisis
Lapland as the Russians attacked
Moscow betrayed by the Germans
Virginia Cowles has seen it all.


As a pioneering female correspondent, she reported from the frontline of 1930s Europe into the Second World War, always in the right place at the right time. Flinging off her heels under shellfire; meeting Hitler (‘an inconspicuous little man’); gossiping with Churchill by his goldfish pond; dancing in the bomb-blasted Ritz … Introduced by Christina Lamb, Cowles’ incredible dispatches make you an eyewitness to the twentieth century as you have never experienced it before.