Book dossier

Desert Queen

by Janet Wallach

Reared in the comfortable and privileged world of the "eminent Victorians," Gertrude Bell turned her back on convention and sought adventure in Arab lands. Traveling numerous times through the Syrian Desert and, at risk to her life, through the great Arabian desert of the Nejd - the last European to do so before the eruption of World War I - she wrote of her travels in widely acclaimed books. The trust she earned among the Arab sheikhs and chieftains made her indispensable when war broke out; recruited by British intelligence, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brain for T. E. Lawrence's military brawn. To cap off this amazing career, she participated in the postwar peace conferences as a major architect of the modern Middle East, helping to found the state of Iraq and installing its dashing monarch, to whom she was an intimate adviser. In her lifetime, she was known as the most powerful woman in the British Empire.