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Author: Janet Wallach Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0307744361 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 466
Book Description
The definitive biography, mesmerizing and “richly textured ” (Chicago Tribune), that inspired the acclaimed documentary, Letters from Baghdad. With a new Afterword "Desert Queen...plucks Gertrude Bell out of the shadow of Lawrence of Arabia." —The Boston Globe Here is the story of Gertrude Bell, who explored, mapped, and excavated the Arab world throughout the early twentieth century. 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. E. Lawrence's brawn. 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. 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. 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.
Author: Janet Wallach Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0307744361 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 466
Book Description
The definitive biography, mesmerizing and “richly textured ” (Chicago Tribune), that inspired the acclaimed documentary, Letters from Baghdad. With a new Afterword "Desert Queen...plucks Gertrude Bell out of the shadow of Lawrence of Arabia." —The Boston Globe Here is the story of Gertrude Bell, who explored, mapped, and excavated the Arab world throughout the early twentieth century. 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. E. Lawrence's brawn. 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. 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. 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.
Author: Georgina Howell Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 1429934018 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 512
Book Description
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. " ... there’s never a dull moment in the peerless life of this trailblazing character." - Kirkus Reviews
Author: Paul Thomas Collins Publisher: Proceedings of the British Aca ISBN: 9780197266076 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This is a major re-evaluation of the life and legacy of Gertrude Lowthian Bell (1868-1926), the renowned scholar, explorer, writer, archaeologist, and British civil servant. The book examines Gertrude Bell's role in shaping British policy in the Middle East in the first part of the 20th century, her views of the cultures and peoples of the region, and her unusual position as a woman occupying a senior position in the British imperial administration. It focuses particularly on her involvement in Iraq and the part she played in the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy and the Iraqi state. In addition, the book examines her interests in Iraq's ancient past. She was instrumental in drawing up Iraq's first Antiquities Law in 1922 and in the foundation of the Iraq Museum in 1923. Gertrude Bell refused to be constrained by the expectations of the day, and was able to succeed in a man's world of high politics and diplomacy. She remains a controversial figure, however, especially in the context of the founding of the modern state of Iraq. Does she represent a more innocent age when the country was born out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, or does she personify the attitudes and decisions that have created today's divided Middle East? The volume's authors bring new insights to these questions.
Author: Gertrude Bell Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0143107372 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
A portrait in her own words of the female Lawrence of Arabia, the subject of the PBS documentary Letters from Baghdad, voiced by Tilda Swinton, and the major motion picture Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, and Robert Pattinson and directed by Werner Herzog Gertrude Bell was leaning in 100 years before Sheryl Sandberg. One of the great woman adventurers of the twentieth century, she turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world, and became the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the borders that define today’s Middle East. As she wrote in one of her letters, “It’s a bore being a woman when you are in Arabia.” Forthright and spirited, opinionated and playful, and deeply instructive about the Arab world, this volume brings together Bell’s letters, military dispatches, diary entries, and travel writings to offer an intimate look at a woman who shaped nations. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Author: Georgina Howell Publisher: Pan Macmillan ISBN: 1447286251 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 614
Book Description
Queen of the Desert is the compelling story of Gertrude Bell, archaeologist, linguist, and author whose passion for the Arab peoples turned her into an architect of the independent kingdom of Iraq, a role driven by an unyielding spirit. Drawing heavily on Gertrude's personal diaries and letters, journalist Georgina Howell paints an intimate portrait of a Victorian woman who gave up her world of privilege and plenty to navigate the complex geopolitics of the Middle East. On the pages of Iraqi history, Gertrude Bell leaves an enduring, indelible mark, seeing its first king Faisal safely onto the throne in 1921. Originally published as Daugher of the Desert, Gertrude's powerful story is a compelling portrait of a woman who woman who transcended the restrictions of her class and age and in so doing created a remarkable and enduring legacy. Not all queens wear a crown, some carry a compass.
Author: H. V. F. Winstone Publisher: Stacey International ISBN: 9780954772802 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 504
Book Description
"I don't care to be in London much. I like Baghdad, and I like Iraq. It's the real East, and it is stirring; things are happening here, and the romance of it all touches and absorbs me." So wrote Gertrude Bell, as she reflected on the path she had chosen in life. Adventurer, archaeologist, and Arabist, Bell cut a unique figure in the turbulent politics of the Middle East during the First World War and its aftermath. This book will appeal to all those keen to gain a real understanding of the history behind the headlines in Iraq, and an insight into the life and times of one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary women."--Publisher.
Author: Liora Lukitz Publisher: I. B. Tauris ISBN: 9781780766812 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
Gertrude Bell was a commanding figure: scholar, linguist, archaeologist, traveler and 'orientalist'. A remarkable woman in male-dominated Edwardian society, she shunned convention by eschewing marriage and family for an academic career and extensive traveling. But her private life was marred by the tragedy, vulnerability and frustration that were key to her quest both for a British dominated Middle East and relief from the torture of her romantic failures. Through her vivid writings, she brought the Arab world alive for countless Britons. Alongside T.E. Lawrence, she was hugely instrumental in the post-war reconfiguration of the Arab states in the Middle East. In Iraq she became friend and confidante of the new King Faisal, and a prime mover in drawing up the country's boundaries and establishing a constitutional monarchy there, with its parliament, civil service and legal system. She was influential in creating the state which had all the trappings of independence while remaining a virtual British colony. The legacy of her work is still being played out in the conflicts of today. Yet behind her public success was a backdrop of personal passions, desires and the relationships that drove this extraordinary woman. Embroiled in an unsuccessful love affair with Charles Doughty-Wylie, a married man, she found peace in the solitude of the desert. But the seemingly intractable problems of the newly independent Iraq led her to write of the 'weariness of it all'. Shortly afterwards she took her own life with a lethal dose of sleeping pills. Using previously unseen sources, including Gertude Bell's own diaries and letters, Lukitz provides a deeper political and personal biography of this influential character.
Author: Gertrude Bell Publisher: ISBN: 9781633913660 Category : Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
One very determined woman incontestably held her own and more with the great figures of the Middle East in the early twentieth century. That was Gertrude Bell. Highly strung, petulant, aggressive, and gossipy, she occasionally provided tea but rarely sympathy to the extraordinary group of British imperial administrators whose adventures centered on Basra at the head of the Gulf in 1914-1916. Not enough has been made of the Barra cabal as a group rather than individuals. Nor have the machinations of the 'Basra gang' had the attention given to figures such as Lawrence of Arabia and General Allenby, individuals who when all is said and done were not deeply involved in Gulf and Iraqi affairs. The Arab of Mesopotamia is a collection of once confidential briefing papers that Bell helped to produce for British army officers new to the Mesopotamian theater, published in Basra by a military printer. The tone confirms views that Gertrude Bell and her colleagues were interested in the possibility of playing on the world stage and wanted quiet in the shaikhdoms while they pursued notions of a Middle East empire that would rival the Indian empire. Heady plans were made for an Imperial service that would include Arabia, Iraq, the Trans-Jordan, and even the Sudan. While exiting, this 'mega outlook' was opposed to Arab concerns. The apotheosis for Bell was reached in 1921 when Winston Churchill called a famous meet- ing of forty Middle East experts in Cairo. The conference photography shows her as the lone woman. Secreted in the Semiramis Hotel, she and the other 'forty thieves' laid out policies whose failures (and Lawrence's disillusionment) are well known. Therein lies the tragedy of her life, perhaps more of a tragedy that than of Lawrence. Almost none of the undertakings to the Arabs to which she was an enthusiastic participant were realized. There were a number of these promises, although they were less publicized than those made in the famous McMahon letters. For example, the assurances at the 1916 durbar at Kuwait were equally dishonored: the shaikh of Kuwait received a CSI and Ibn Saud got the KCIE along with pledges that with the defeat of the Turks: "The dream of Arab unity ... has been brought nearer fulfillment than dreams are wont to come, but the role of presiding genius has been recast." Instead of an Arabian viceregality that would justify the wonderful title of 'Viceroys of the Gulf, ' or of a 'final' resolution of the region's conflicts, British Imperial administration be- tween the world wars became a long and unsatisfactory interlude in which little was accom- plished. Hobson remarks in Imperialism about the use of 'masked worlds' and an Imperial Genius for inconsistency: "Most of the men who have misled ... have first been obliged to mis- lead themselves." This was the case with Gertrude Bell, who committed suicide in 1926. After she and her friends departed the scene, the air went out if the balloon, and the 'countervailing disadvantages' of being misled became apparent to the Arabs. This little-known book is one key to heady days at Basra when the Middle East empire seemed likely.
Author: Janet Wallach
Author: Janet Wallach
Author: Georgina Howell
Author: Paul Thomas Collins
Author: Gertrude Bell
Author: Gertrude Lowthian Bell
Author: Georgina Howell
Author: H. V. F. Winstone
Author: Gertrude Lowthian Bell
Author: Liora Lukitz
Author: Gertrude Bell