Art and Architecture, mainly · 1mo · discuss
The female scholar behind Iraq's independenceThe LibrariansGertrude Bell (1868-1926) was the granddaughter of British nobility and the daughter of an monied industrialist. Instead of seeking a life of cocktail parties, her brain actually required a high-class education. In 1884 Bell went to Queen’s College and Oxford University, gaining 1st Class Honours in Modern History. She spent the next 15 years in constant travel including Persia, Egypt and Algiers.A “cause” arrived in 1899 when she met archaeologist David Hogarth and his world of Middle East antiquity. Already fluent in Persian, French and German, Bell also studied Arabic and Hebrew, and in...