Can you forgive him?

The story is a good one. Lady Anne was born in 1837 and died, in Egypt, in 1917. Her mother, Ada, who was connected with Babbage and his prototype computer, was Byron’s only legitimate child. Aged 32 and wealthy, Lady Anne was plucked off the shelf by the poet and philanderer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. After miscarrying several times, in 1873 she gave birth to their only living child, Judith, later Lady Wentworth. The Blunts then set out on their Arabian adventures, she being the first European woman to cross the northern desert. They met real danger and hardship. Winstone is excellent on these journeys, which undoubtedly had a profound cultural influence on Lady Anne. He says, and the notion is credible, that her name (but not Wilfrid’s) continues to have a historical resonance in parts of Arabia.

During this period, the Blunts collected, thanks to Lady Anne’s energy, intellect and money, the foundation stock of Arab horses for their studs at Crabbet Park, in Sussex, and Sheykh Obeyd, in Egypt. Without her, this noble and useful breed would very likely have been mongrelised and lost.

She was also a talented watercolourist (several examples are reproduced here), played the violin and became fluent in Arabic. It’s not too much to say that her heart belonged to Islam and all things Arabian. Hers is the name that appears as author of two great travel books, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates and A Pilgrimage to Nejd.

It is, however, Wilfrid’s writing that they principally contain. And here we come to the problem inherent in this enterprise. Lady Anne did all these things; she was an extraordinarily able and gifted woman, but she was self-effacing to a fault — ‘infuriatingly acquiescent and forgiving’ is how Winstone puts it.