Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998)

On a recent trip to Chelsea a new plaque was discovered, one erected only a couple of months ago after the 20 year rule whereby English Heritage will only erect a plaque 20 years after the recipient is deceased to allow an objective appraisal of their fitness to be made. The recipient of the plaque erected at 72 Cadogan Square; designed by Richard Norman Shaw in 1878 is Martha Gellhorn, who to work backwards committed suicide in the flat that she had occupied since 1970. She was suffering from ovarian and liver cancer and was almost blind. A terrible affliction for one who had made her life through observing. The flat, which comprised the top floor and the attic of the building was by all accounts 'sparsely furnished... [and] ... a little austere. Gellhorn entertained friends and admirers from the worlds of literature and journalism there. Gellhorn's journalistic career lasted over thirty years beginning with a move to Paris before finding fame chronicling the Great Depression of 1934 for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, an experience that was the basis of a book of short stories written in a clear, simple style. The Trouble I've Seen published in 1936 expressed Gellhorn's anger at the way that the poor, the weak and the dispossessed were being treated. Gelhorn who supported the Republican cause travelled to Spain with Ernest Hemingway who she met in Key West and reported in a partisan fashion on the Spanish Civil War for The New Yorker and Collier's. They were to marry in December 1940 and divorce in 1945. Gellhorn stayed in Europe reporting from Czechoslovakia and Germany in the run-up to war. A time she recalled in A Stricken Field (1940). hen the war began she determined to 'follow... the war wherever I could reach it.' She was hindered in this however by her lack of press credentials occasioned by US policy forbidding female correspondents. She reported from the Italian front and later reported on D-Day tby hiding in a hospital ship bathroom, and later, impersonated a stretcher bearer. She later reported on the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, an experience documented in The Wine of Astonishment in 1948. A collection of Gellhorn's war articles was published as The Face of War in 1959. This was updated in 1967 and 1986 and 1993 taking in her reportage from conflicts from across the globe. This included impassioned pieces condemning US involvement in Vietnam and long critical articles about Palestinian refugees. Gellhorn is remembered in the Nartha Gellhorn award for Journalism a fitting legacy for one who was highly influential in the practice of journalism.