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

Angelina Jolie as Gertrude Bell

From the Washington Times:

Angelina Jolie is set to play a British woman who helped map out the modern Middle East in the early 20th century, the Hollywood Reporter said Friday.

According to Agence France-Presse, the Oscar-winning actress is slated to play the title character in “Gertrude Bell,” who has been described as the female Lawrence of Arabia for her pioneering work in establishing the framework for what would become Jordan and Iraq.

The project is still in development by British director Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions, said THR, noting that Miss Jolie has a history of playing strong female characters.

Bell was passionate about archaeology and languages, spoke several languages including Arabic and Persian, and wrote about her extensive travels in a number of books, including “Persian Pictures,” and “Syria: The Desert and the Sown.”

During World War I, Bell, who won widespread admiration among Arabs, worked as a British spy and helped to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and to found Iraq.

The project’s screenplay is being written by Jeffrey Caine, who wrote the script for 2005’s “The Constant Gardner.”

See also: 

* The Women Who Made Iraq

* Gertrude Bell Papers

* Gertrude Bell Project

* Gertrude Bell - Queen of the Desert

The Lady of Iraq

From the Jerusalem Post:

T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia, as he is more commonly known – may have hogged the limelight in early twentieth-century Britain as a swashbuckling campaigner in the deserts of Arabia. But his associate and contemporary, Gertrude Bell, was no slouch on matters Middle East either. Bell was a bona fide trailblazer, a woman of towering intellect and ability whose achievements in the Arab region led many to call her the “uncrowned queen of Iraq” following her involvement in the country’s uncertain beginnings as its architect and creator.

Aslender woman with red hair and piercing green eyes, Bell, who died 85 years ago last month, is today perceived as a figure who, far from accepting the traditional gender roles that made her era of post-Victorian England a distinctly male domain, pursued a life away from the bonds of marriage and the responsibilities of motherhood. Yet, when her immersion in the cut and thrust of Middle East realpolitik offered up the chance to build a stable and unified nation state, Bell exposed herself to an immense – some say, insurmountable – undertaking, one that continues to haunt the Middle East to this very day.

However, it was her 1916 appointment as a political officer in Basra, in southern Iraq, that thrust her into the political and diplomatic limelight. There, in the ancient land of Mesopotamia, she won the affection of Arab statesmen, founded a national museum and had significant input into the design and constitution of the new Iraq – established under a British mandate in 1920 from the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul. It was there, a decade after she arrived, that she died quite suddenly after overdosing on sleeping pills, either by accident or by design.