Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell - Hardcover

Howell, Georgina

3.97

3,273 ratings by Goodreads

9781405045872: Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1405045876 ISBN 13: 9781405045872

Publisher: Macmillan, 2006

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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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Review:

'A remarkable story...told engagingly and often first-hand via the
extensive use of Bell's own prodigious written output'
-- Oxford Times

'Bell's journeys are skillfully evoked and the unfolding of Middle East politics well placed...Exemplary' -- Sunday Times

'Excellent...[written] with a skill and clarity worthy of her
heroine' -- The Economist

'Hers is a story well worth telling, and Georgina Howell has done
it superbly in this book' -- Traveller Magazine

'Howell...writes with greater confidence and authority on Bell' -- Spectator

'In the current climate Bell's part in creating modern-day Iraq is
particularly resonant.' -- Metro

'The intrepid and eventful life of Gertrude Bell is a biographer's
dream' -- Catholic Herald

'You don't have to share Gertrude Bell's passions in order to be
her biographer, but it helps' -- Sunday Telegraph Seven

'the extracts from her letters- smart, passionate,
self-depracating- are the best thing about this' -- Wanderlust

‘The combination of epic scene and personal drama makes Georgina
Howell’s saga a winner.’ -- Daily Express

Book Description:

The riveting story of an adventurer who refused to accept the constrictions of her class and age

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