Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare war correspondent’s Korea and Suez Crisis campaign group of seven awarded to Frank Goldsworthy, who worked at the Daily Express for over 40 years, a career interrupted only once by wartime service as a Lieutenant in the R.N.V.R., when he witnessed the famous “Atlantic Meeting” between Churchill and Roosevelt in 1941 and was employed in Naval Intelligence in the Mediterranean theatre: his career “scoops” included coverage of the arrival of H.M.S. Amethyst at Hong Kong in 1949 and the mysterious disappearance of naval diver Commander “Buster” Crabb in 1956, just two of the many fascinating stories featured in his autobiography Want You Soonest, Memoirs of a War Reporter

1939-45 Star; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals; Korea 1950-53 (F. E. Goldsworthy); U.N. Korea; Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Near East (F. Goldsworthy, War Correspondent), together with original addressed card forwarding box for the 1939-45 awards and box of issue for the sixth, good very fine and better (7) £2000-2500

Frank Goldsworthy, who was born in Darlington in January 1912, began his journalistic career on his hometown Evening Despatch at £1 a week in 1929, where ‘accuracy, first, last and always’ was impressed upon him by a succession of fierce chief reporters. But it was in his subsequent career at the Daily Express, which newspaper he joined at the age of 23, that Goldsworthy established himself as a reporter and foreign correspondent of rare ability. It was, too, as related in his obituary in The Times, a career that ‘was as unpredictable and exciting as anything from the pages of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop’.

Meanwhile, however, on the advent of hostilities, Goldsworthy enlisted in the “Wavy Navy” as a Writer and, in August 1941, found himself seconded to “Operation Zebra”, the code-name for the famous “Atlantic Conference” between Churchill and Roosevelt held aboard H.M.S. Prince of Wales in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. And as a result of his skills in shorthand and typing, Goldsworthy found himself directly involved in the compilation of some extremely sensitive and secret minutes, and actually ‘bashed out the signal informing both the cabinet and the world of the agreement’; he also found time to get a photograph of Churchill chatting to a sailor, but was refused permission to release it to his old friends at the Daily Express.

After being commissioned, Goldsworthy served in Naval Intelligence for three years, mainly at Gibraltar and in Italy, during the course of which duties he often liaised with Ian Fleming. The latter wrote to him in July 1945, praising his work (‘You have certainly had a most interesting war ... I was very sorry I missed you when you were back earlier this year’).

Returning to the Daily Express after the War, Goldsworthy found himself in the envious position of gaining passage aboard H.M.S. Amethyst as she made her way to a triumphant reception at Hong Kong following her epic escape from the Yangtze in 1949 - he actually joined her at sea from H.M.S. Jamaica. Interestingly, too, just 48 hours after her arrival, he became the first journalist to see Coxswain Leslie Frank’s famous diary of the incident, and was granted permission by Commander Kerans to take extracts for a leader page feature in the Daily Express. In fact such was the unique nature of his subsequent reports and pictures that he was cabled by his Editor: ‘We have complete world scoop “Amethyst” pictures today renewed congratulations your outstanding enterprise.’


When the Korean War broke out, Goldsworthy was despatched to the U.N. naval base at Sasebo in Southern Japan, from where he joined H.M.S. Jamaica on several operations, including the landings at Inchon. On this latter occasion the Jamaica was attacked by enemy aircraft and Goldsworthy’s “Action Station” hit by a cannon-shell - luckily he had been slow to rise that day, otherwise ‘there just would not have been enough room for all that cannon-shell shrapnel and for me.’ He afterwards gained attachment to the U.S. Marines to cover the landings at Wonsan.

During the “Suez Crisis” Goldsworthy hitched a lift to Port Said aboard a minelayer, where his memories of the next five days were ‘of uncollected bodies lying half out of shot-up cars, burning buildings, the occasional crack of sniper fire, of masses of sunken shipping in the canal - and more angry and frustrated journalists than I ever met in my life.’

But in between these assorted foreign assignments Goldsworthy also found time to attend to some equally interesting stories back home, among them that concerning the mysterious disappearance of Commander Lionel “Buster” Crabb in April 1956: ‘It took just two telephone calls from my own fireside to convince me that the official explanation was an inadequate lie and that he had been engaged on a clandestine inspection of Russian ships visiting Portsmouth. I had served with Crabby in Gibraltar, where he was engaged on searching British ships hulls for time bombs and I was in the Naval Intelligence Center. We were together again at Leghorn, where he was Mine Disposal Officer and I was the Staff Intelligence Officer.’

Happily, however, there were lighter moments, even when Goldsworthy was engaged in reporting murder cases. Thus his “scoop” in the case of Dr. Robert George Clements of Southport, who, having managed to get away with killing three of his wives, killed his fourth and then himself, after a certain “Mrs. M.” had reported her suspicions to the police. Subsequently, much to the annoyance of the rest of Fleet Street, Goldsworthy was the only reporter to get an interview with “Mrs. M.”: “Do you know, Frank, why you were the only one I let into my house? You were the only one who ever closed the garden gate,” she later told him.

Nonetheless, by 1958, Goldsworthy had decided that he had had enough of ‘round-the-clock shift work’ and, at his own suggestion, was appointed the first Daily Express staff man to be stationed full time in the Royal Courts of Justice. Here he enjoyed ‘a new world of experience’, and was greatly appreciated by numerous judges, who made good use of his shorthand skills ‘when they did not want to wait until the official court transcript was ready, to find out exactly what had been said an hour or two previously.’

Goldsworthy, a reporter who ‘could doorstep a reluctant interviewee and was formidably persistent but always polite’, died in August 1997, aged 85 years.

Sold with a large quantity of original documentation and photographs, in addition to much other research and related memorabilia, the whole contained in the leather shoulder-bag he carried on his numerous foreign assignments, and including a file relating to the “Atlantic Charter” (e.g. his photograph of Churchill, a menu and seating plan, and a Prince of Wales cap tally), later correspondence with interesting “tales form the field”, some of which are recounted in his autobiography, Want You Soonest, Memoirs of a War Reporter, a copy of which is also included, and ship’s “flimsies” for his time as an Naval Intelligence Officer (3), dated 16 September 1943, 13 August 1945 and 22 September 1945; together with a folio of prints depicting famous masterpieces in the Hermitage collection, as presented to Goldsworthy at a reception marking a visit to Leningrad by the Royal Navy in 1955; and much besides.