The forgotten 'female Lawrence of Arabia' - Gertrude Bell

From The Telegraph:

In a picture taken to mark the Cairo Conference of 1921, Gertrude Bell - characteristically elegant in a fur stole and floppy hat, despite being on camel back - sits right at the heart of the action. To one side is Winston Churchill, on her other TE Lawrence, later immortalised in David Lean’s 1962 epic, Lawrence of Arabia.

Bell was his equal in every sense: the first woman to achieve a first (in modern history) from Oxford, an archaeologist, linguist, Arabist, adventurer and, possibly, spy. In her day, she was arguably the most powerful woman in the British Empire - central to the decisions that created the modern Middle East and reverberate still on the nightly news.  Yet while Lawrence is still celebrated, she has largely been forgotten.

read more her @ The Telegraph

About Gertrude Bell

• The Extraordinary Gertrude Bell edited by Mark Jackson & Andrew Parkin
• Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell
• Queen of the Desert: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell by Georgina Howell
• Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell by Georgina Howell
• Desert Queen by Janet Wallach
• Gertrude Bell: The Lady of Iraq by H.V.F. Winstone

Written By Gertrude Bell:

• Persian Pictures
• Syria
• A Woman In Arabia
• The Hafez Poems of
• The Desert & The Sown: Travels in Palestine and Syria
• The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914
• Review of the Civil Administration in Mesopotamia
• The Letters of Gertrude Bell - Volumes 1-2
• Tales from the Queen of the Desert
• The Arab of Mesopotamia