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Looking for Trouble

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Looking for Trouble

By: Virginia Cowles
Narrated by: Kelly Burke
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About this listen

This sensational 1941 memoir of life on the frontline of wartime Europe by a trailblazing female reporter is an 'unforgettable' (The Times) rediscovered classic, introduced by Christina Lamb

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

As a pioneering female correspondent, she reported from Europe from the 1930s into the Second World War, watching 'the lights in the death-chamber go out one by one' from the frontline - always in the right place at the right time.

Flinging off her heels under shellfire; meeting Hitler ('an inconspicuous little man') and the 'dapper' Mussolini; gossiping with Churchill by his goldfish pond or dancing in the bomb-blasted Ritz; reading The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism on a Soviet train or eating reindeer with guerrilla skiers ... Introduced by Christina Lamb, Cowles' incredible dispatches will make you an eyewitness to the twentieth-century as you have never experienced it before.

' An amazingly brilliant reporter ... One of the most engrossing [books] the war has produced.' New York Times Book Review

©2022 Virginia Cowles (P)2022 Faber & Faber
Europe Great Britain Military Women War Russia England Imperialism Soviet Union Winston Churchill
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Most relevant
I am surprised that I was unaware of this memoir, especially given a cast of characters including Hemingway, Martha Gelhorn, Churchill, both Winston and Randolph, Lloyd George and countless other luminaries and celebrities of the 1930s. Ranging from civil war Spain to Germany, France, Soviet Union , Finland and England in the late 30s and early war years. Her perceptions are acute, if bourgeois tainted, however she loses perspective when it comes to England, her affection and identification leads her to an over rosy portrait. A recommended listen for anyone interested in these years.

Rememberance of Things Past

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Written in the build up and first couple of years of WWII, you can see how it was back then before history was rewritten to tidy it up. It was a very different and smaller world of information, giving a sense that it was possible to know and speak to the main players, particularly as such a determined journalist. You get a sense, though never mentioned, that being female made her included and invited in a different way potentially to male journalists. For instance, she got to see Mussolini because he assumed wrongly that she would be a pushover. Her shear determination and opportunism seemed to get her places where women would not normally have access. What an impressive person! How advanced and even minded she was for her time. Judge her for then. Well worth a listen.

contemporary insight

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Absorbing throughout, great insight to the times, well narrated and it gets under the skin of the era. Highly recommended.

Great listen

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As above….. It was brilliant :the story and the narrator; quite outstanding… Many thanks. Just the writing ofthe review is. a pain!

It was brilliant the story and the narrator; quite outstanding… Many thanks

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