To wake in that desert dawn was like waking in the heart of an opal. — Gertrude Bell (image via Newcastle University) Gertrude Bell was a complicated woman. She was the first in many things: the first woman to earn a degree in modern history at Oxford, the first woman hired as a British intelligence officer and the first woman to trek across the Syrian desert without a male escort. She spoke and wrote Arabic and Persian, and when she traveled to Iraq in the early 1900s, the Iraqi people respected her -- way more than they did her imperialist male counterparts. They called her "Mother of the Faithful," or simply "Miss Bell."
A Woman to Know: Gertrude Bell
A Woman to Know: Gertrude Bell
A Woman to Know: Gertrude Bell
To wake in that desert dawn was like waking in the heart of an opal. — Gertrude Bell (image via Newcastle University) Gertrude Bell was a complicated woman. She was the first in many things: the first woman to earn a degree in modern history at Oxford, the first woman hired as a British intelligence officer and the first woman to trek across the Syrian desert without a male escort. She spoke and wrote Arabic and Persian, and when she traveled to Iraq in the early 1900s, the Iraqi people respected her -- way more than they did her imperialist male counterparts. They called her "Mother of the Faithful," or simply "Miss Bell."