Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

A Socialite Turned War Correspondent

In 1935 socialite Virginia Coles was a society-girl columnist for toney magazines like Harper’s Bazzar, writing about fashion and gossip. She traveled the world writing light pieces about the places visited. Then in Italy she encountered Mussolini and his fascists and her career took a different turn. She became a war correspondent.

“Looking for Trouble: The Classic Memoir of a Trailblazing War Correspondent,” by Virginia Cowles tells that story. It is her memoirs during the period 1936 through 1941, collected from the columns she wrote for various US magazines over that period.

During that period she was everywhere. She covered the Spanish Civil War, her first attempt at being a war correspondent. She was the only correspondent to report from both sides of the conflict, visiting both Republican and Nationalist Spain during the struggle. It proved addictive. From there she went on to cover events in Europe as the continent slid into World War II.

She was a witness to the betrayal of Czechoslovakia. She spent time in England and Germany as the Czech crisis boiled up. She visited Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland in anticipation of witnessing the start of a German invasion. Then she visited Munich during the run-up to the Munich Agreement where Britain and France gave the Sudetenland to Germany.

She visited Russia between the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland. She witnessed the beginning of World War II, going to Finland to cover the Winter War from the Finnish perspective. She was in France during its fall, and recounts her escape from Paris after the collapse of the French army. She then recounts her adventures in Britain after the fall of France, during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

The book was originally published late in 1941. It was a frank appeal to the United States to join the war against Hitler. Her experiences had turned her strongly anti-fascist and anti-communist. By then she was all-in for the British cause. (She would eventually marry an Englishman and settle in Britain.)

Cowles is gradually transformed from an almost-naïve socialite to a serious correspondent. Yet she never loses the personal touch, relating encounters with people as disparate as Mussolini, Churchill, Stalin, and Chamberlain, and people such as Unity Mitford. “Looking for Trouble” is a fascinating look at the world prior to and during the early years of World War II, and the people that shaped it.

“Looking for Trouble: The Classic Memoir of a Trailblazing War Correspondent,” by Virginia Cowles, Modern Library, 2022, 496 pages, $18.99 (paperback), $11.99 (ebook)
This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.

What a great idea to republish this collection of journalistic essays about Europe in the late 1930s through the first part of 1941. Few people today know about the extraordinary life of Virginia Cowles, whose debutante background and social status almost mandated that she cover society news when she became a journalist. But Cowles had higher ambitions. As she worked in Europe, she saw the political tumult and was determined to view it first hand and write about it. So many underestimated her, which allowed her often to get close to the action—and score an unexpected one-on-one interview with Mussolini. At the same time, her social status had her regularly meeting such people as Winston Churchill and his family, and the (in)famous Mitford family. She even ended up chatting with Prime Minister Chamberlain shortly after he returned from making “peace in our time” with Hitler in Munich.

Cowles made a habit of talking to everybody she could about what they thought in their countries—especially when in crisis—including revolutionary Spain, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and the USSR. She was able then to give higher-ups like Chamberlain a perspective they wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to.

Cowles did her best to remain neutral in her reporting. This neutral position often made it difficult for her to talk to people involved in conflicts. They pressed her to proclaim her loyalties and, when she refused, she was called a “Red” by the fascists and a fascist by, for example, the Nationalist fighters in Spain. Rather than take it personally, she used that as an opportunity to discuss the black-and-white mentality that refused any empathy or compromise, and insisted on painting anyone not allied as a enemy to be obliterated. She vividly depicts a minor Sudeten German official who first describes the Czechs as good enough fellows, but as soon as the Nazis begin rattling their sabres, this official and all the other ethnic Germans living in their area begin to make murderous threats against their Czech neighbors.

While Cowles came to sympathize with the Nationalists and peasants in Spain, that didn’t make her a “Red” by any means. She visited the USSR shortly before World War II and was appalled at the poor standard of living and the sheer ignorance of the Soviets insisting that everything was perfect in the USSR and horrid in the west. Her experiences with both left-wing and right-wing totalitarianism renewed her belief in democracy.

Cowles has an almost chatty writing style, but one that is still full of vivid historical detail, including her presence at one of the huge Nuremberg Nazi party rallies, at the Arctic Circle during the Russian-Finnish War, in Paris when it fell to the Nazis, in London during the Blitz. I don’t like to get into politics when writing reviews, but it was hard not to be depressed at times reading this book because of the many parallels with what is happening in the US these days with the rise of authoritarianism, white/Christian nationalism, and the readiness by all too many to dispense with others’ rights and privileges. I have always been fascinated by World War II and its origins, but it was always an academic interest. It’s tragic that now the history of Europe in the 30s and World War II seems more and more like it could be prologue. I can’t help but wonder what Cowles would have thought of what is going on in this country.

This is a truly wonderful book about an extraordinary journalist -- a woman in the early days of women in journalism -- who experienced fascinating times and events. I would recommend it to anyone. My life is a little frantic at the moment, so I'm not sure I will have time to pitch for a review, and in any event as I freelance and this is a rerelease, it would be a difficult sell. But I have marked my calendar for Aug 2 to give it a shout out on social media. If the publisher will have share cards or similar, I would welcome them: Meg@megwaiteclayton.com

Thanks!