She did expect to get married, have children and play second fiddle to a husband, but never did. Oddly for such an ambitious and atypical woman, she was staunchly anti-suffragist, seemingly thinking of herself as an exception.
She went on to become a noted mountaineer and traveled throughout the Middle-East as an explorer and antiquarian. A strong willed and intelligent youngster, she was one of the first women in England to be allowed to attend a university.
The book covers her life from the late 1800s through the late 1920s. That included choosing Iraq’s first King – Faisal – and making sure he was put on the throne. She drew its borders, foresaw the difficulties, recommended how it should be governed, and negotiated and politicked until she got her way.
Little remembered until the recent Iraq wars, it was she who sat down in 1919 and quite literally invented the country. This fascinating account, set during the height of British imperialism, follows the life of the remarkable Gertrude Bell. Too long eclipsed by Lawrence, Gertrude Bell emerges at last in her own right as a vital player on the stage of modern history, and as a woman whose life was both a heartbreaking story and a grand adventure.Jack’s guest Monday book review – Desert Queen by Janet Wallach In this masterful biography, Janet Wallach shows us the woman behind these achievements-a woman whose passion and defiant independence were at odds with the confined and custom-bound England she left behind. After the war, she played a major role in creating the modern Middle East and was, at the time, considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire. Recruited by British intelligence during World War I, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brains to match T.
Here is the story of Gertrude Bell, who explored, mapped, and excavated the Arab world throughout the early twentieth century. This "richly textured biography" ( Chicago Tribune) inspired the mesmerizing documentary, Letters from Baghdad, soon to air on public television.
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