Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell

Subtitled `Adventurer, adviser to kings, ally of Lawrence of Arabia', this book easily could be a work of fiction. In it, Janet Wallach describes the life of Gertrude Bell, a lone Victorian woman travelling the Arabian sands with no-one but local guides, conversing with powerful sheikhs and chieftains, exploring and recording antiquities, playing a vital role for the British in World War I, and a friend and muse of T E Lawrence. Later referred to as the `Desert Queen', the unofficial queen of Iraq, she was an important figure in bringing stability to post-war Iraq and for this reason her name has resurfaced recently as, once more, the world tries to do the same. This book, revised in 2004 and now in paperback, tells of Bell's background and more especially her life in the Middle East, the people she met and influenced and her legacy for the country, including her foundation of the Baghdad Museum.