Georgina Howell does not try to hide her adulation of Gertrude Bell. In the preface she declares her ‘comparable with those giants among mankind, Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great of Russia’. A less swooning verdict would consider Bell a very talented civil servant. To compare her with England’s greatest queen and the empire-building Russian empress seems to be over-egging the pudding.
In Bell’s extraordinary life and career there is certainly much to admire. Achievement followed achievement in a blur of academic and professional success. The first woman to get a first in Modern History at Oxford; the first woman to be awarded a prize by the Royal Geographical Society; the first woman officer in British military intelligence; an important first ascent in the Alps; architect and kingmaker of modern Iraq. With this sort of CV, hard-won in a male world, her dedicated opposition to the suffragettes and the extension of the vote to women comes as something of a surprise. But Howell forgives her without much of a struggle.
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