Following Miss Bell: Travels Around Turkey in the Footsteps of Gertrude Bell

by Pat Yale

In 1889 Gertrude Bell, the great British archaeologist, writer and explorer, arrived in Constantinople (Istanbul) on the first of many visits to what is now Turkey. Over the next 25 years, she would travel the length and breadth of the country, crossing the Tigris on a raft of inflated goatskins and taking the earliest photographs of remote corners of the country. Veteran guidebook writer Pat Yale set out to retrace Bell's Turkish adventures as one British traveller following another. Her journey took her to the site on the Syrian border where she met Lawrence of Arabia, to forgotten monasteries with solitary occupants and to villages where trilingual inhabitants recalled a more multicultural past. Along the way, she rubbed shoulders with adherents of faiths that barely survive in modern Turkey, with refugees struggling to make new lives, and with myriad taxi drivers whose stories exemplify the Turkish dream. Interwoven with each other, the tales of these two women's travels evoke a Turkey of then and now that is so much more complex than its modern tourist image suggests.

396 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2023

Reviews

[Zenia Selby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pat Yale's matter-of-fact style perfectly complements Gertrude Bell's romanticism. Bell began her journey at the beginning of a century of conflict and change in Turkey. Yale charts her own travels as a conclusion of the story, but I suspect we are, in fact, only in the middle.

There were some very moving parts of the book I still think about regularly. Especially Yale's experiences of Diyarbakir, Antakya and the Syriac churches of the south.

[Virginia Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This meticulously researched and beautifully written travelogue reminded me of William Dalrymple's 'In Xanadu' and 'From the Holy Mountain', books in which he too followed in the footsteps of a famous traveller. Before reading it I knew a bit about the life and achievements of Gertrude Bell (I had read Georgina Howell's biography 'Queen of the Desert' and seen the 2015 film of the same name) but I had no idea that this extraordinary woman had visited Turkey on at least eleven occasions between 1889 and 1914, crossing the country multiple times to visit and document archaeologically and historically significant sites, particularly those dating from Byzantine times. Getting to these places was often difficult – Bell travelled on horseback, climbed mountains and forded rivers – but she forged ahead regardless, making her own arrangements, supervising all of the digs and doing all of the documentation (including photographs) herself. In 2015, Pat Yale, a British writer based in Istanbul, set off on quest to re-trace her subject's Turkish expeditions and see how many of the sites that had drawn her to the country still existed. This book is the result and it really is fascinating – Gertrude Bell was a true force to be reckoned with and her life was unbelievably adventurous considering the limitations that were placed on women in the 19th and early 20th century. Pat Yale's journeys following Bell's routes are just as adventurous and her vignettes of the many Turkish characters she meets along the way give a very human and contemporary flavour to what in less-expert hands could have been a dry history. That's not to say the historical account doesn't take centre stage – the research involved here is wide-ranging and must have taken years to compile – but in telling the story of this intrepid traveller Yale not only brings her subject to life, she also gifts us a fond and informed portrait of Turkey, its amazing heritage and its people.

[Kenan Cruz Çilli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved following both Gertrude and Pat on their journeys throughout Anatolia, contrasting their notes with my own experiences from trips throughout the country. Pat's language is delightfully descriptive and evocative. Would definitely recommend the book to all Turkey-themed travelogue lovers!