From the bestselling author of The Unfinished Palazzo, the untold history of six groundbreaking women who fought to become front-line correspondents during World War II

'They were not just reporters; they were also pioneers, and Judith Mackrell has done them proud.' –Spectator

Going with the Boys follows six intrepid women as their lives and careers intertwined on the front lines of the Second World War.

Martha Gellhorn got the scoop on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, transformed herself from ‘society girl columnist’ to combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth was the first English journalist to break the news of the war, while Helen Kirkpatrick was the first woman to report from an Allied war zone to be granted equal privileges to her male colleagues.

Barred from official briefings and from combat zones, their lives made deliberately difficult by entrenched prejudice, all six set up their own informal contacts and found their own pockets of war action. In this gripping, intimate and nuanced account, Judith Mackrell celebrates these extraordinary women and reveals how they wrote history as it was being made, changing the face of war reporting forever.

'This is a book that manages to be thoughtful and edge-of-your-seat thrilling.' – Mail on Sunday

'Like the copy filed by her subjects, it is an essential read.' – BBC History Magazine

"Women's ability to cope was apparently beyond military imagination, yet ironically, as Judith Mackrell's compelling book shows, navigating newspaper bias and military restrictions often gave women the professional edge . . . They were not just reporters; they were also pioneers, and Judith Mackrell has done them proud." - Spectator

"Hugely entertaining and informative . . . the author is excellent on the way that being a girl in a man's world had serious dangers . . . This is a book that manages to be thoughtful and edge-of-your-seat thrilling." - Mail on Sunday

"[Mackrell] has done an extraordinary job of mining their reportage, interviews and memoirs, and creates an experiential tapestry based on their experiences . . . a powerful complement to previous histories of Second World War correspondence." - TLS

"Although Mackrell reminds us male war correspondents still roughly outnumber women by three to one, the women in her book prove gender is no barrier to doing the job well." - Daily Mail

"This book is a salutary reminder that it is not only men who experience wars, and it is not only men who report on them . . . Like the copy filed by her subjects, it is an essential read." - BBC History Magazine

"The female journalists who feature here were pioneers in their fields." - Literary Review

"Brutality goes hand in hand with high spirits. Danger was inseparable from exhilaration . . . This book could easily become a television drama. What women they were, in pursuit of war." - Oldie

"An engrossing book, highly recommended." - Choice Magazine

"[An] immersive and revealing group biography . . . Sparkling quotations from the reportage are woven throughout, and colorful biographical details shed light on the correspondents’ defiance of conventions . . . A rousing portrait of women who not only reported on history, but made it themselves." - Publishers Weekly

"An exhilarating read packed with emotion and genuine humanity. A vivid portrayal of six remarkable women who made history reporting on World War II." - Kirkus