Looking for Trouble

I loved Virginia Cowles from the moment I read about her arrival in Madrid to cover the Spanish Civil War. In her high-heeled shoes and elegant wool dress Cowles looked as though she were dressed for a Manhattan tea party rather than the trenches of Spain. Yet she was a doggedly ambitious reporter whose glamour often bought her unique access to her subjects, not least the besotted Soviet General who kept her captive for three days, feeding her champagne while trying to convert her to Marxism. From Spain, Cowles went on to cover much of WW2, including the fall of… show more.

Originally published in 1941, this new 2022 edition has a foreword by Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent Christina Lamb. Gellhorn and Cowles met in Spain in the Spring 1937, where Cowles was unconventionally reporting on both sides of the civil war. She interviewed Mussolini and would later meet Hitler, to whom she referred as “an inconspicuous little man.” Like Gellhorn, Cowles understood that fascism in Europe was a threat to democracy everywhere. Her words remain true eighty years later.

I would love to invite Virginia Cowles to dinner, but unfortunately she died in a car accident in the 1980s (Ouija board, anyone?). A socialite turned war correspondent, Virginia navigated not just Nazis and Fascists while covering the Spanish Civil War and WWII, but an entire misogynist war bureaucracy bent on keeping her from doing her job. Looking for Trouble is a smart, funny, moving, and insightful account of being on the front lines in high heels and a fox fur jacket.