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Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
April 2007
On Sale: April 17, 2007
481 pages
ISBN: 0374161623
EAN: 9780374161620
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
A marvelous tale of an adventurous life of great historical
import She has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia, which,
while not inaccurate, fails to give Gertrude Bell her due.
She was at one time the most powerful woman in the British
Empire: a nation builder, the driving force behind the
creation of modern-day Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of
privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society,
choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an
archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author (of Persian
Pictures, The Desert and the Sown, and many other
collections), poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer
(she took off her skirt and climbed the Alps in her
underclothes).
She traveled the globe several times,
but her passion was the desert, where she traveled with only
her guns and her servants. Her vast knowledge of the region
made her indispensable to the Cairo Intelligence Office of
the British government during World War I. She advised the
Viceroy of India; then, as an army major, she traveled to
the front lines in Mesopotamia. There, she supported the
creation 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.
Gertrude Bell, vividly told and impeccably researched
by Georgina Howell, is a richly compelling portrait of a
woman who transcended the restrictions of her class and
times, and in so doing, created a remarkable and enduring
legacy.
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