“I had no idea what was in their dark minds concerning me,” she wrote in her journal. At one point, near the desert town of Hayil, she was held as a prisoner by the Rashid Tribe. Not all of these encounters were positive.

This was the first of several desert expeditions in which she met various Arab tribal leaders in the deep desert, creating relationships that would ultimately prove valuable to her and to the Western powers both during and after World War I. Against the wishes of her home country of Great Britain, as well as the local Turkish authorities, (the Arabian lands were then part of the Ottoman Empire), Gertrude set out on camelback from Damascus across the entire Arabian landscape, a 3 month journey. Prisoner in ArabiaĪfter her initial visits to the region as an archeologist, Ms. The region enamored her, and she quickly learned the local language and customs. Eventually her knowledge and experience landed her a position with the British Foreign Service during WWI, the only woman to do so. For Gertrude it was “love at first sight”, and she returned to the region in 1909 to visit archaeological excavations in Babylon.

After this she travelled to Persia to visit her uncle, an ambassador in Tehran. Gertrude Bell received her education at Oxford, the first woman to graduate in Modern History with honors, a feat she achieved in only two years at the age of 17. I believe most true travelers are also dreamers, and I found myself fully engrossed in Gertrude’s fascinating Arabian world- a bygone era of which we can only romanticize about today.

It was the perfect book for me at the time. I was in a “Middle East” kind of mood because we were contemplating traveling to the region for our next adventure. This book was on our library bookshelf for years before I finally picked it up to give it a try. Bell’s extraordinary life and times in Desert Queen. Isabelle Eberhardt, Mary Kingsley, and Isabella Bird are just a few in this group, but one of the most remarkable examples of this is Gertrude Bell, whom many have referred to as the “Desert Queen.” Author, Janet Wallach, explores Ms. There was a time when a select few Victorian ladies did what would be unthinkable then - they set out on remote and dangerous expeditions through strange and inhospitable foreign lands. The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Advisor to Kings, and Ally of Lawrence of Arabia

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