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Daughter of the Desert
Georgina
Howell (Pan Macmillan)
Gertrude Bell's journeys are skillfully evoked and the unfolding
of Middle East politics well placed...Exemplary.' Sunday Times
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
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 she used her command of Arabic and
knowledge of tribal affiliations to become indispensable
to the Cairo Office of the British government. A friend of
T.E. Lawrence and an adviser to the Viceroy of India, during
the First World War, Bell travelled from Delhi to Mesopotamia
where she championed 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.
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Georgina Howell began in magazine journalism at the age
of seventeen. She was fashion editor of the Observer,
features editor of Vogue, deputy editor of Tatler and
principal feature writer for The Sunday Times.
She lives London and in Brittany.
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