Virginia Spencer Cowles OBE was a noted American journalist, biographer, and travel writer. During her long career, Cowles went from covering fashion, to covering the Spanish Civil War, the turbulent period in Europe leading up to World War II, and the entire war. Her service as a correspondent was recognized by the British government with an OBE in 1947. After the war, she published a number of critically acclaimed biographies of historical figures. In 1983, while traveling with her husband, she was killed in an automobile accident which left him severely injured.
Early life
Cowles was born in 1910 in Brattleboro, Vermont to Dr. Edward Spencer Cowles and his wife Florence Wolcott Cowles, née Jacquith. In the 1930s, she started to work as a journalist in the United States. After first working on the gossip columns of Boston and New York newspapers - for which she wrote mainly about fashion, love and society - she moved to foreign reporting.
Spanish Civil War
Cowles went to Spain in 1936, with the intention becoming a war correspondent, despite her relative youth and lack of experience. Her coverage from Spain was notably different from that of many of her contemporaries like Martha Gellhorn ) in that she was determined to cover the war from both sides. Some of her most notable reporting came from Nationalist sources, such as her interview with Pepe Quintanilla the chief executioner of Madrid. She reported on the Spanish Civil War for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times, and the Hearst newspapers. Cowles' first book, published in early 1941, Looking For Trouble, details both her experiences in the war, and the small community of foreign war correspondents that developed there, which included Hemingway, Gelhorn and others who would go on to cover World War II. Cowles wrote the book to convey her belief that America should enter World War II. She included in it her telling account of claustrophobia at a Nuremberg Rally, and her experience of Hitler's diminishment as he left the stand:
his small figure suddenly became drab and unimpressive. You had to pinch yourself to realize that this was the man on whom the eyes of the world were riveted; that he alone held the lightning in his hands.
World War II
After leaving Spain, Cowles reported from all over Europe, shuttling between Russia, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Finland, and France during 1939 and 1940. For the Sunday Times, she reported on the Winter War, before returning to England in 1940 after the fall of France. She witnessed the first day of The Blitz, and continued to report on the Battle of Britain throughout, writing from Dover how "You knew the fate of civilization was being decided fifteen thousand feet above your head in a world of sun, wind and sky". From 1942 to 1943 she worked for John G. Winant, the American Ambassador in London. For the Sunday Times and the Chicago Sun she reported on the North African Campaign. Cowles missed journalism and returned to reporting, from Italy and France in 1944-45.
Later career
In the following four decades Cowles achieved considerable commercial success with a long series of political individual and family biographies. Critics often complained about the lack of sharpness and reliability of her historical analysis, but praised the accuracy of her insight into humanity. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1947.
Personal life
In 1945, Cowles married Aidan Crawley a British politician, journalist, television executive and author. They had three children, two sons and a daughter. Cowles was killed in an automobile accident in 1983, in the car her husband was driving.
