Muad’Dib
In the movie of The English Patient, some British soldiers in the Arabia Desert refer to ‘the Bell maps’ which point to a way through the mountains. “Let’s hope he was right,” a soldier says. “He” was a she: Gertrude Bell, who explored and charted Arabia from Syria to the Persian Gulf. Alone.
Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations
by Georgina Howell
The Woman Who Made Iraq
A review by Christopher Hitchens
On the cover of this book is an arresting photograph taken in front of the Sphinx in March 1921, on the last day of the Cairo conference on the Middle East. It shows Gertrude Bell astride a camel, flanked by Winston Churchill and T. E. Lawrence. She wears a look of some assurance and satisfaction, perhaps because—apart from having spent far more time on camelback than either man—she has just assisted at the birth of a new country, which is to be called Iraq. . .
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