Bell of Arabia

BY HVF WINSTONE

Barzan, 19.95

THIS masterly, much-revised biography of Gertrude Bell is essential reading for anyone wanting to comprehend the nightmare that is contemporary Iraq. After a starred first in History from Oxford, Bell joined the Arab Bureau as the first woman officer in the British Intelligence Service, and was sent to Baghdad as head of the Iraq branch in 1915. Before she died there, in 1926, she played a pivotal role in establishing the boundaries of Iraq, besides being the founder of the National Museum of Iraq and the country’s first director of antiquities.

Last year, on a visit to the vandalised museum - I’ve visited in happier times - a plaque in its pricipal gallery honouring Bell caught my eye: "With wonderful knowledge and devotion she assembled the most precious objects, and through the heat of the summer worked on them until the day of her death on 12 July 1926."

My father was military secretary to the great engineer Sir William Willcocks, who designed the first dams for the Tigris and Euphrates, and worked closely with Leonard Woolley, the archaeologist excavating Ur of the Chaldees and its ziggurat. When he reported to Sir Percy Cox, his ultimate boss, and asked what he should do, the great pro-consul replied, "You’ll do as my Secretary tells you." Since "his Secretary" was Gertrude Bell, my father sensed it better to demur. He soon came to have the highest possible regard for "that astonishing woman". In the political field, her contribution to the very foundation of the Iraqi state was significant, as this book makes clear. Winstone makes the shrewd conclusion that like all champions of other people’s causes, she was often given to error, but her words and actions were those of a friend.

She was sincere in the pursuit of Iraqi independence and, above all, in her determination to preserve the heritage of what will always be, despite all present appearances, the cradle of our civilisation.