A biography of the woman who, indirectly, was the catalyst for many of the troubles in the Middle East, including the Gulf War. In 1918, Gertrude Bell drew the region's proposed boundaries on a piece of tracing paper. Her qualifications for doing so were her extensive travel, her fluency in both Persian and Arabic, and her relationships with sheiks and tribal and religious leaders. She also possessed an ability to understand the subtle and indirect politeness of the culture, something many of her colonialist comrades were oblivious to. As a self-made statesman her sex was an asset, enabling her to bypass the ladder of protocol and dive into the business of building an Empire.


From Publishers Weekly
To Sir Mark Sykes, the pre-WWI British Foreign Office Arabist, "that damned fool," Miss Bell, created an "uproar" wherever she went in the Middle East and was "the terror of the desert." Three social seasons were all a young lady of good family was allotted to snare a husband. Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) had thrice failed and received the consolation prize, a trip to Teheran to visit her uncle, the British envoy there. After that, she could not be kept close to the dank family manse in Northumbria but was drawn to the sun-drenched Middle East. Dominated even there by her Victorian father, head of a family-owned ironworks, she was denied permission to marry a moneyless diplomat. She refused?to her later regret?a married lover in the military and assuaged her disappointment by pressing British interests in Arab lands east of Suez, becoming in effect the maker of postwar Iraq. The first woman to earn a first-class degree in modern history at Oxford, she wrote seven influential books on the Middle East and, following WWI, was named oriental secretary to the British High Commission in Iraq. Not just another book about an eccentric lady traveler, this colorful, romantic biography tells of a woman with an inexhaustible passion for place that did not always substitute successfully for continuing heartbreak. Despite some maudlin passages, Wallach, coauthor with her husband, John Wallach, of Arafat, vividly evokes a memorable personality. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Anyone familiar with T.E. Lawrence is at least acquainted with the name Gertrude Bell. Almost 20 years older than Lawrence, from a wealthy Victorian family, Bell traveled alone with local Arabs through the deserts of the Middle East when at home in England she couldn't go the British Museum without a chaperone. One of the first women to graduate from Oxford, Bell was independent and intelligent yet paradoxically snobbish and antifeminist (she worked against the suffrage movement). In her travels, writings, and political activities, she strove to become a "person," but, alone and childless, she committed suicide at age 57. Wallach, coauthor of Arafat: In the Eye of the Beholder (LJ 9/1/90), has written a well-researched, readable biography of a fascinating yet ultimately sad woman, too long relegated to the footnotes of other people's biographies. For larger public and academic libraries.?Katherine Gillen, Luke AFB Lib., Ariz.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times, Kate Muir
Bell probably influenced Middle Eastern politics as much as her contemporary and friend, Lawrence of Arabia.


From Kirkus Reviews
The life of Gertrude Bell (18681926)--bluestocking, Oxfordian, orientalist--told in mind-addling detail by Wallach (coauthor, The New Palestinians, 1992, etc.). This biography of Bell--Britain's woman in Mesopotamia during the early part of this century--is a near day-by-day account of her life, relying heavily on Bell's correspondence and diaries to set the tone of the narrative (long on intimacy, short on analysis). Wallach deploys the linear mode of historical storytelling: She opens with the Bell clan amassing their millions in the ironworks of Northumbria and closes with Bell's suicide. In between are her early years at the family manses Red Barns and Rounton Grange; her first-class degree in modern history from Oxford; her years abroad, always moving in diplomatic circles (the parties, the dress fittings, the search for a mate) until she gets her first taste of the East in Persia. Forget about men--though Wallach tries hard to insinuate them into the story as often as possible, it's clear from this moment on that Bell's destiny is not with a person but with a place, and that place is turn-of-the-century Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia. Money allowed her to ramble; she got to know the land and people and archaeology. And when called, she did her bit for the empire: spying on the Turks and Germans, giving T.E. Lawrence the lowdown on tribal ways, sweating away the war years in Baghdad and Basrah. As intimate advisor to Iraq's King Faisal, she whispered the colonial office's wishes into his ear. The rub here is in the details--too many, and they dampen, at times suffocate, the narrative: ``A cigarette and a cup of thick Turkish coffee at her side, she munched pistachio nuts and studied.'' From the swarm of particulars emerges a curious soul--hard traveler, hack for Empire, cosmopolite, iconoclast, anti-suffragist--a complex, absorbing character, long overdue for study. (30 b&w photos, 4 maps, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Turning her back on her privileged life in Victorian England, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), fired by her innate curiosity, journeyed the world and became fascinated with all things Arab. Traveling the length and breadth of the Arab region, armed with a love for its language and its people, she not only produced several enormously popular books based on her experiences but became instrumental to the British foreign office. When World War I erupted, and the British needed the loyalty of the Arab leaders, it was Gertrude Bell's work and connections that helped provided the brain for T. E. Lawrence's military brawn. After the war she participated in both the Paris and Cairo conferences, played a major role in creating the modern Middle East, and was generally considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire.

In this incident-packed biography, Janet Wallach reveals a woman whose achievements and independent spirit were especially remarkable for her times, and who brought the same passion and intensity to her explorations as she did to her rich romantic life. Too long eclipsed by Lawrence's fame, Gertrude Bell emerges in this first major biography as a woman whose accomplishments rank as crucial to world history (especially in light of the continuing geopolitical importance of the Middle East) and whose life was a grand adventure.

FROM THE CRITICS

Dallas Morning News

Outstanding.

Chicago Tribune