Journalist Clare Hollingworth, who broke the news that the Second World War had started, has died at the age of 105.

She was just three days into her first journalism job in August 1939 when she saw hundreds of German tanks preparing to roll into Poland.

The rookie reporter for the Daily Telegraph, who was 27 at the time, scooped the world with her story.

The Daily Telegraph's "scoop of the century", which ran without a byline, was headlined "1,000 tanks massed on Polish border. Ten divisions reported ready for swift strike".

She said the British embassy in Warsaw did not believe her story and she was forced to hold her telephone receiver out of her hotel window in Katowice so the diplomat could hear the German tanks for himself.


Image: The Telegraph story which revealed the war had started

Ms Hollingworth told the Telegraph in a 2011 interview that she always "enjoyed" being involved in war.

"When I was very small, in World War One, I used to hear people talk about the battles, and I did become extremely interested in warfare," she said.

"I'm not brave, I just enjoy it."

Before becoming a reporter, Ms Hollingworth helped rescue thousands of people from Adolf Hitler's forces by arranging British visas.

During her career she reported from conflict zones in Palestine and Vietnam, China during the cultural revolution and the Algerian civil war.

Image: Ms Hollingworth spent her last years in Hong Kong

And she was credited with the first and last interviews with the Shah of Iran.

Ms Hollingworth was posted to China in 1973, and spent the rest of her career in Asia.

She moved to Hong Kong in the 1980s and lived there until her death.

Ms Hollingworth married twice, and although she had a stepdaughter, she dismissed the idea of having children of her own, instead saying she wanted to devote her time to work.

Paying tribute, Chris Evans, The Telegraph's editor, said: "Clare Hollingworth was a remarkable journalist, an inspiration to all reporters but in particular to subsequent generations of women foreign correspondents.

"She will always be revered by all of us at The Telegraph. Our sympathies to her friends and family."