Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell

Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell

by Georgina Howell (Author)

Synopsis

At a time when women were still largely excluded from both education and the workplace, Gertrude Bell was an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author, poet, photographer and mountaineer - but until the Iraq War of 2003 few people had heard her name. During the course of her extraordinary life she not only abandoned her privileged background of country house parties and debutante balls to become one of the first women to graduate from Oxford; she also travelled into the desert as an archaeologist, where through her command of Arabic and knowledge of tribal affiliations she became indispensable to the Cairo Office of the British government. A friend of T.E. Lawrence, she later advised the Viceroy of India and, during the First World War, travelled from Delhi to the front line in Mesopotamia where she took up and steadily upheld the principle of an autonomous Arab nation for Iraq, promoting and manipulating the election of King Faisal to the throne and helping to draw the borders of the fledgling state.

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More Information

Format: Unabridged
Pages: 368
Edition: Unabridged
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 18 Aug 2006

ISBN 10: 1405045876
ISBN 13: 9781405045872

Author Bio
Georgina Howell has spent her life working in magazine journalism, from Fashion Editor of the Observer to Features Editor of Vogue . She has worked for the Sunday Times and Tatler and is a prolific feature writer. She lives in London and Brittany.