Books

A nation builder in petticoats

Socialite Gertrude Bell hiked up her hems and helped create Iraq.

By STEVE WEINBERG
Published April 22, 2007

If Hollywood producers had made a different decision almost 50 years ago, they could have filmed Gertrude of Arabia rather than Lawrence of Arabia. Then Englishwoman and adventurer Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) would have become a household name, rather than Englishman and adventurer T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935), who lagged years behind her.

It is not too late for Gertrude of Arabia, and such a movie would be filled with relevance for viewers in 2007. That is because Bell, as much as any other individual, created the nation now known as Iraq.

Biographer Georgina Howell, a British journalist, tells the Bell story masterfully. Although an admirer of Bell, Howell avoids hagiography through extensive research into Bell's flaws as well as her considerable virtues.

Born to a wealthy commercial family, Bell enjoyed plenty of advantages. Her father and stepmother firmly believed in the education of women. Bell first followed the debutante path society expected of her, but during a trip to Romania she found it heady to learn a new language and customs.

When an aunt invited her to travel to Persia, Gertrude studied the language, learned local customs in places like Tehran and became captivated. Yet not even Bell could have predicted that when she returned to Persia during World War I, she would arrive as an ambassador without portfolio. Through her vast knowledge, force of personality and her sincere hope that Arabs could rule themselves as skillfully as the British, Bell played a significant role in Baghdad.

That Bell could travel through unforgiving desert and other rough terrain without becoming lost or injured, raped or murdered seems miraculous. Howell explains the nature of that secular miracle, in clear prose filled with telling details.

If any biography proves the adage that truth is stranger than fiction, this is that biography.

Steve Weinberg is a biographer in Columbia, Mo.

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations

By Georgina Howell

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 512 pages, $27.50

[Last modified April 19, 2007, 12:50:46]