The vibrant Vita Sackville-West was one of the last British visitors to Gertrude Bell’s Baghdad home in 1926, a few months before Bell’s tragic death from an overdose. The two women were quite different in age, temperament and outlook, but had much in common, not least that they were forces of nature with gripping personal stories and a penchant for rattling the bars of their gilded, gendered cages. Both were the snobbish sort of gender-rebels, drawn together by social class, financial privilege and circumstance. Despite being denied positions, opportunities and property through not being born male, neither of them were particularly feminist. Rich women like Vita and Gertrude didn’t need to be.
Read moreGertrude Bell and the Pandemic
Gertrude Bell with T.E. Lawrence circa 1920 (Credit: Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University)
Gertrude Bell, T. E. Lawrence and David Lloyd George each had their brushes with the ‘Spanish Flu’ influenza pandemic of 1918-19 and the grief, illness and long-term effects that accompanied it. Sir Mark Sykes, joint author of the secretively planned 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement which carved up the post-WW1 Middle East to Russio-colonial tastes, caught a fatal dose at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
The agreed British and American position in political circles was to play down the seriousness of the influenza epidemic and this is evident in Gertrude Bell’s letters, as she alerted her family to her illnesses and her need to pay doctors while almost casually brushing off her ill-health. She played the game well, abiding by the party line of not admitting to weakness to avoid stirring any greater unrest in a world still reeling from the upheavals of the Great War and a period of very wet, cold weather. Even the misnomer ‘Spanish Flu’ suited the western powers seeking to remove this influenza epidemic from public view and world leaders’ spheres of responsibility.
Read moreFine Dining in the Desert with Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Bell’s camp, 1913-14 (Credit: Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University)
Gertrude Bell led some impressive expeditions across the desert landscapes of the Middle East, but rarely was she without her baggage animals or a cart to carry her dinner service, provisions and equipment, and a servant (or two) to prepare her meals. She also needed corn for the horses and camels and food for her ‘soldiers’ (bodyguards) and servants, so she commanded some fairly sizeable caravans at times. A British woman from a relatively elite social background, she reported back to her father and step-mother in regular letters about her travels, her archaeological surveys, her studies of Arab tribes, and her mealtimes. It wasn’t just that food per se was important to her - she was diligent about properly punctuating her day with breakfast, lunch and dinner. The online Gertrude Bell Archive of Newcastle University, thanks to its search function, shows 627 entries in her diaries and letters just for the word ‘dined’ alone. Desert travels also involved eating with Arab tribal leaders as part of the social obligation of reciprocal gift-giving. Bell also received culinary hospitality from many Middle Eastern peoples, including the Yazidis. The details that Bell gives us of these cultural transactions are a fascinating insight into the role that food and eating played in her desert travels, the creation of her persona, and how she saw the natural order of things.
Read moreGertrude Bell 1914-15 - Christmas in France, a New Year in Purgatory
Gertrude Bell in the Middle East, just a few years prior to the outbreak of WW1
Gertrude Bell and T E Lawrence did their best, whilst disagreeing over fundamental issues such as the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. Bell foresaw endless struggle and war – and what she saw in France, the fear and the grief and the pain and the suffering, especially of the young, made her wearily cynical of her generation getting it right. She died in 1926; but, like many, by 1915 she’d already seen and felt enough. It was far from ‘all over by Christmas’ - it was never over.
Read moreGertrude Bell's World War 1 - Beginnings
Gertrude Bell possibly circa 1914 (Photo credit: Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University)
Gertrude Bell’s experience of war work in the south of England and in France was brief, but formative. It began just a few months after the outbreak of the Great War in the summer of 1914. It’s an intriguing story, able to be told primarily because we have her surviving letters as a central part of the archive. Bored and frustrated at Clandon Park Hospital in the south of England - which has been, to date, a little-discussed episode in her life - with no role to speak of except taking round reading materials to wounded Belgian troops, she maneuvered her way over to France to fill a secretarial position. Bell, while there, awkwardly met with Lilian (‘Judith’) Doughty-Wylie, the experienced, respected field nurse who was the wife of the man she hoped to marry; had an epiphany about life being too short; set up a filing system to help distraught relatives better trace missing and wounded boys and young men; and came home just a few months later. Within a year Gertrude Bell was called to the Middle East to serve the British administration – where, in Baghdad, after a series of notable geo-political accomplishments, she died just a decade later by her own hand.
Read moreGertrude Bell - in Search of the 'Real Woman'
My disappointment and frustration with Bell’s portrayal in Herzog’s ‘Queen of the Desert’ led me to start writing a blog piece about what is actually fascinating and significant about her life and her relationships - and yes, that includes her ‘love life’ (when this is not being mis-characterised and hatchet-edited as part of the movie process) - as well as thinking about what perspectives might best be brought to bear when analysing and studying the important aspects of Bell’s world and agency. The resulting study is something of a psychological narrative, punctuated by Bell’s encounters with real flesh-and-blood people. (I also have a lot more to write about the circumstances around her death, and how it was received and documented.)
Read moreGertrude Bell's Christmas in Bethlehem, 1899
Bethlehem, Christmas Day 25th December 1899. 'Photographed the women in the streets'. Gertrude Bell.
It [Bethlehem] was politics etched into the stones of a built landscape; it was 'tribal'; it was staring Bell in the face. It was a unique and special Christmas at an extraordinary time in history - and it shaped Gertrude Bell.
Read moreThe Death Of Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Bell's funeral, Baghdad, 12th July 1926. Photo: Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University
How someone died is not always relevant to how they lived; but in the case of Gertrude Bell, I believe that the circumstances of her death tell us a great deal about how she felt about her own life - which in turn casts light on a whole host of historical circumstances of that era, not least the impacts of class and sex, during a time when the Middle East was being carved up and re-plated for Western consumption.
I've studied Gertrude Bell's work for over 25 years. I never felt especially attracted or connected on any personal level to the woman who manifests herself in her writings, but was always fascinated by the richness of her archaeological and photographic output and how that legacy was handled. Yet, just lately, I find myself being drawn again and again to read about the circumstances of her death. I think I know why this is, and it certainly is personal - this year I'll be the age she was when she died. And I think I've finally found the connection that was missing.
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