One of the lucky ones: Hella Pick escapes Nazi Germany

Hella Pick is one of that vanishing generation of Jewish refugees who arrived in Britain on the eve of the second world war, courtesy of the Kindertransport. An only child of separated parents, born and brought up in Vienna, she was luckier than most: her mother got out soon afterwards. Her grandmother, who remained, died in Theresienstadt.

Early life in the UK was not easy for refugees from Nazism. Visas were only granted to those who had an offer of work, and just about the only work permitted to them was domestic service, which must have been particularly galling for people like Hella’s mother who had once been prosperous. Young Hella was relatively fortunate. Thanks to a series of generous sponsors, she was privately educated at a day school in the Lake District and, aged 17, won a place at the LSE, where she studied economics at the feet of Harold Laski.

In her mid twenties she was taken on by the now defunct West Africa magazine, the first step on the path to what proved to be a long and distinguished career in journalism. She witnessed the high hopes that attended the struggle for independence in what was then colonial Africa, becoming acquainted with some of the early nationalist leaders before they morphed into presidents for life.

In 1961 she was asked by the Guardian to report from the United Nations and later from Washington. It was the height of the Cold War and she had a ringside seat. She was to remain with the paper for nearly 40 years. An accomplished networker, with a capacity for making lasting friendships, she travelled the world, engaging with the great, the good and the not-so-good, and sometimes just observing from the sidelines.

Given the places Pick has been to and the things she has seen, there is a disappointing lack of local colour in her book, and a bit too much ‘and then I did this, and then I went there…’.