In 1937, Martha Gellhorn arrived in Madrid with a backpack, fifty dollars in cash, and her first journalistic assignment: to cover the Spanish Civil War. Over half a century later, in 1989, she landed in Panama to report on the American invasion. She was 81 years old.

During her life, she flew with British pilots on WWII night bombing raids and married Ernest Hemingway. She wrote five novels, fourteen novellas and two collections of short stories. She was befriended by Leonard Bernstein, pursued by H G Wells, and courted by Collette’s lover. She was blonde and glamorous and modelled for Schiaparelli. Finally, blind and with inoperable cancer at the age of 89, Gellhorn calmly and rationally took her own life.

Martha Gellhorn: A Life is by Caroline Moorehead, an old friend of Gellhorn’s. So it’s not as objective as it could be, but that hasn’t stopped it from being a great book. In the Listener, Carol Cromie says

Gellhorn’s life story is the stuff of action movies, and it’s the sense of nothing held back that makes this an absorbing read … Not surprisingly, a small queue has formed for my copy of the book.

In the Herald, Margie Thomson comments

… there’s something enticing, hypnotic even, about the chronicling of a life like this. And what a life!

Indeed. This one's on our Christmas list.