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Gertrude Bell: A Biography
xiii + 322 pp. with 5 figs. & 37 illus., 8vo.
348 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 5, 2016
سيرة شخصية لجترود بيل من خلال رسائلها التي كانت ترسلها لاهلها واصدقائها كنت اتمنى ان يكون التركيز اكبر على دورها المهم في ترسيم الحدود بين كل من العراق والكويت والسعودية ، ايضا من الملفت في الكتاب لقائها بالملك عبدالعزيز في العراق وهناك صورة قديمة جدا في الكتاب
December 24, 2016
قرأت عن كثير من الستشرقين الذين جائو الى الجزيرة العربية و عاشو في الصحراء و بين البدو، لكن ان تفعل ذلك امرأة فهذا عجيب و ليس سهلاً! اضف الى ذلك انها بريطانية و ذكية و عالمة بالتاريخ و من اسرة ثرية ، كل ذلك لم يمنعها من الاقدام على مغامراتها المجنونة !
هذا كان مما شدني للكتاب لكن اسلوبه عادي
هذا كان مما شدني للكتاب لكن اسلوبه عادي
February 17, 2019
If you like Middle East history as I do it was an OK book. I learned some details about the backroom happenings during and after World War One that I didn't know or didn't remember. The first 100 pages were on the boring side. Once it got to her Middle Eastern work it got much more interesting for me. About Gertrude Bell herself it was disappointing to find out that she was an anti-feminist. One of those women that fought AGAINST women's rights, such as the right to vote. What a fool she looks like now. I wonder if anyone has done a study just on women like her. She was incredibly rich, and privileged from the top strata of British society yet she denigrated women in general. She was an extraordinary and at the same time pathetically typical woman. At the end the writer quotes her man servant saying that she would travel in the rain even if she was moving in water and mud up to her waist. I wish there had been more observations and descriptions about her and her adventures like that. It would have made the book much more enjoyable. If you are not a Middle East history buff don't bother reading it.
January 28, 2009
My impressions at the time I first read it:
Shouldn't have been written, but evidently the easy research due to excessive letter writing between Ms. Bell and everyone under the sun was too hard for Mr. Winstone to resist.
Ms. Bell was a diplomat, of sorts, in the Mid-East, through the First World War and after. She seems to have picked up a great deal of knowledge about, and some feelings for, the sensitivies of that region though her own travels, and then spent several years running aboutforcing her biased opinions (labeled as "assessments") on people who wished she would shut the hell up. Her work during the war itself seems to have been genuinely good and selfless, but afterward she was more a pain than an asset.
The problem for Mr. Winstone seems to have been that as he progressed in his research, he discovered that not only did he have precious little respect or admiration for Ms. Bell, he genuinely disliked her. He did his valiant best to hide this from his readers, but in his treatment of her probable anti-semitism and apparent suicide his mask falters and cracks. As for the Arabs whose future she tried to dictate via the harrassed (but interfering) Foreign Office, they were courteous enough to be gracious to her while she lived, but probably thought her a nosey, interfering old bitch. So did I. A sad waste of Mr. Winstone's efforts.
Later thoughts: Since I read this I have heard Bell described as a female Laurence of Arabia... well, that pretty much says it all. And that's not a compliment.
Shouldn't have been written, but evidently the easy research due to excessive letter writing between Ms. Bell and everyone under the sun was too hard for Mr. Winstone to resist.
Ms. Bell was a diplomat, of sorts, in the Mid-East, through the First World War and after. She seems to have picked up a great deal of knowledge about, and some feelings for, the sensitivies of that region though her own travels, and then spent several years running aboutforcing her biased opinions (labeled as "assessments") on people who wished she would shut the hell up. Her work during the war itself seems to have been genuinely good and selfless, but afterward she was more a pain than an asset.
The problem for Mr. Winstone seems to have been that as he progressed in his research, he discovered that not only did he have precious little respect or admiration for Ms. Bell, he genuinely disliked her. He did his valiant best to hide this from his readers, but in his treatment of her probable anti-semitism and apparent suicide his mask falters and cracks. As for the Arabs whose future she tried to dictate via the harrassed (but interfering) Foreign Office, they were courteous enough to be gracious to her while she lived, but probably thought her a nosey, interfering old bitch. So did I. A sad waste of Mr. Winstone's efforts.
Later thoughts: Since I read this I have heard Bell described as a female Laurence of Arabia... well, that pretty much says it all. And that's not a compliment.
Want to Read
June 2, 2008Nuanced review of Gertrude Bell and the implications of her life as an officer of the British empire: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20691.
If Bell, as an officer of the British Empire who was instrumental in drawing Iraq's national borders, was as conscious of the failures of the empire as the reviewer says she was, then as a figure who had "knowledge" and "contact" with the culture, she is a complex and interesting person to learn about. Exploring her life and her failures is worthwhile--especially to see how it reveals the failures of the empire she worked for.
If Bell, as an officer of the British Empire who was instrumental in drawing Iraq's national borders, was as conscious of the failures of the empire as the reviewer says she was, then as a figure who had "knowledge" and "contact" with the culture, she is a complex and interesting person to learn about. Exploring her life and her failures is worthwhile--especially to see how it reveals the failures of the empire she worked for.
June 1, 2009
This was one of the first bios on Gertrude, I believe much more scholarship has been done. Two addtional bios have come out in the past 3-4 years, plus the big one in 1995, the author's name escapes me.
This book has a very personal tone, written by a fellow Briton the sympathy lies with GB and British intereset naturally. A little flowery, but I do want to re-read this one after reading the others. (This actually applies to the 1973 edition)
This book has a very personal tone, written by a fellow Briton the sympathy lies with GB and British intereset naturally. A little flowery, but I do want to re-read this one after reading the others. (This actually applies to the 1973 edition)
Read
January 13, 2011couldn't get through this one before it was due back at the library. A very interesting woman, but the book is a bit dry. Hard to do with completely accurate historical figures, but I wish that we learned about these types in our history class! I never heard about her before reading Dreamers of the Day by Mary Russell - which is a fun read.
February 4, 2010
Quite thorough, more so than the more recent and better publicized Gertrude Bell, Queen of the Desert, by Howell. Dryer, perhaps, but I was doing historical research. See my developing Gertrude Bell encyclopedia article, which uses this as one of its references.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews