queen of the desert book review

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Gertrude of Arabia

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By Robert F. Worth

• April 29, 2007

The British occupation of Iraq may have seemed like ancient history to the Americans who arrived in Baghdad in 2003. The Iraqis soon showed them otherwise. There were British cemeteries, British-built schools, hospitals, railroads and clubs; I once stumbled on a battered old billiard table donated in the 1920s by King George V. Above all, there was the painfully familiar record of the British struggle to build a nation. And at its center was a stiff-backed officer whom even today the Iraqis call, as if she had been a revered schoolmistress, “Miss Bell.”

Gertrude Bell was precisely the kind of colonial administrator the Americans desperately needed in 2003. Fluent in Arabic and Persian, she had spent almost a decade before World War I crisscrossing the desert, making maps and gaining the trust of tribal leaders and kings. She knew the Mesopotamian region and its people so intimately that one prominent Iraqi sheik, asked about the geographical boundaries of his tribe, told his questioner to ask Bell.

The British government hired her soon after the First World War started, recognizing that she could help turn the Arabs against Ottoman Turkey, Germany’s ally. She did far more than that. After working in Cairo with T. E. Lawrence, whose vainglorious legend she never shared, Bell virtually created modern Iraq. She drafted its borders, corralled its reluctant tribal chiefs and trained Faisal (who had never been there) to be its first king. She came to be known as Umm al Mu’mineen, or Mother of the Faithful.

Georgina Howell, a British journalist, has produced a breathless, somewhat worshipful biography of Bell. It contains almost no mention of Iraq’s recent troubles, and relegates Bell’s work in Iraq to the last third of the book — a surprising decision, given the country’s prominence in her life (and in today’s headlines). This may be because other writers have focused heavily on Bell’s Baghdad years, most notably Janet Wallach in her excellent 1996 biography, “Desert Queen.”

In fairness, Howell’s book makes clear that Bell’s whole life was extraordinary. Born into England’s sixth-richest family, she was furiously independent almost from the start. She declared her atheism as a girl, and later, her intolerance for pretension. (“I have had enough of these dinners where people say ‘I think’ all the time,” she wrote home from London. She wanted to know.) She became the first woman to get a first-class degree in modern history at Oxford, the first woman ever to travel alone in the Syrian desert, the first female officer in British military intelligence.

She also campaigned actively against female suffrage. Despite her own achievements, she accepted the prevailing Victorian view that women were not qualified to make decisions about affairs of state. And as a daughter of the establishment, she was offended by the militancy of the suffragist movement.

Howell suggests that Bell later came to regret this. She also provides fascinating examples of Bell’s struggles with her prescribed role as a woman. She was beautiful, with red hair, fine features and piercing green eyes, and she had at least two passionate love affairs (though she never married and seems to have died a virgin). But she insisted on taking roles that had been reserved for men, fighting constantly against the sexism of British officials. (“She is a remarkably clever woman with the brains of a man,” one peer wrote; others were less kind.) She also had an ill-concealed disgust for most other women, whom she saw as vain and shallow. They generally returned her condescension with scorn.

Howell has unearthed some wonderful material, and she wisely interweaves her text with plenty of quotations from Bell’s own trenchant prose. Some of the most clearsighted things ever written about Iraq (at least in English) came from the pen of Gertrude Bell.

But elsewhere Howell is something of a slave to Bell’s voluminous diaries. She needlessly documents her heroine’s Alpine mountaineering expeditions right down to what she ate for lunch on the Barre des Écrins (“bread and jam, with sardines”).

When it comes to Iraq, Howell accepts Bell’s own views too readily, both about herself and about the broader British imperial mission. At one point Howell refers in passing to “the peculiarly British notion of public service free of corruption” as if it were an unmixed gift to subject peoples.

Howell does not ask, for instance, whether Bell’s peremptory dismissal of religious leaders was wise (“How I do hate Islam!” she wrote in 1921). She favored the more secular Sunni Arabs and helped reinforce their domination over the more numerous Shiites. She argued strenuously against an independent Kurdistan. All these things could be said to have helped forge an inherently unstable polity, leading to bloodshed and war and Iraq’s present disintegration.

Still, Bell’s achievement as a nation builder was extraordinary, especially compared with the American example of the past few years. When she killed herself with sleeping pills in Baghdad in 1926, days before the inauguration of Faisal’s government, it was not because she had failed. Her work was done, the king no longer needed her and she had fallen into a deep depression. The monarchy she helped build lasted until 1958, longer than some of its creators ever expected.

Robert F. Worth, a Times correspondent, has reported on Iraq for the paper since 2003.

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Book Reviews

Queen of the desert gertrude bell, in her own words.

Genevieve Valentine

A Woman in Arabia

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"I cannot feel exiled here; it is a second native country."

Every biography carries dual burdens. One is to represent the life of the subject in the time they lived — how they operated within their own system — as honestly as possible. (That last bit's a real stinger; it's one of the reasons you should never trust a biopic of anyone who's still alive.) The other duty, which often comes in retrospect, is as a point of reference in its subject's legacy, which might be trickier still.

Gertrude Bell is the sort of subject who requires both burdens to be carried well. A virago, she was an Edwardian Great Explorer of the stamp history usually records and lauds in men. The British heiress applied her energy, intellect and funds to any problem she felt was worth solving, which over the course of her life included social issues at home, the Wounded and Missing department in the Great War, espionage and mountain climbing. But she's known to posterity as the woman whose obsession with "the Orient" was instrumental in the creation of Iraq. It's a complicated position that time has made no less thorny: She's been equally praised as the savior of Iraq's archaeological identity through her museum work and condemned as an early "voluntourist," aiding people abroad in order to feel something quietly superior about herself.

One of the most interesting achievements of A Woman in Arabia , a collection of Gertrude's writing extensively contextualized and edited by Georgina Howell, is that it seems determined to present Gertrude as honestly as the era and her own writings allow. She was a wry diarist with a heady sense of her narrative. Her letters are so confident and blithely uncompromising that one imagines the hard-smoking, riding-astride Gertrude must have appeared to the hometown set like Kate Beaton's velocipedestrienne .

But Howell smartly makes sure Gertrude's rougher edges get their due, excerpting Gertrude's casual racism alongside her charming anecdotes, and occasionally interjecting between the lines with a century's narrative remove. (Gertrude describes King Faisal as "amazingly lacking in strength of character" for not disavowing anti-British protesters, oblivious to the masterful game Faisal played with public sentiment.)

It's a fascinating read, though not always smooth. In deference to a life so varied, Howell has segmented Gertrude's milestones into chapters titled with the portent of tarot cards — The Mountaineer, the Desert Traveler, The Lover, the Kingmaker — alongside a detailed chronology. For some chapters, this makes sense; the Great War interrupted Europe so wholly that the boundaries are clear. But some aspects feel less powerful for being separated. Her increasing intensity about preserving artifacts — which eventually led her to treat digs like yard sales — reads at first like an effect of plucky British privilege. Coming across references to it later, when she's desperate to legitimize Iraq as a nation to European powers, gives that aggressive curation much more weight — but only for those willing to flip back and cross-reference.

Overall, though, the story that emerges is thought-provoking. Gertrude was keenly aware of the misogyny she faced from all quarters, and given what contemporaries (including the infamous Lawrence) had to say about her, one understands why she ordered queenly clothes for diplomatic meetings with sheikhs who took her seriously. Her energetic travelogues offer both beautiful imagery and casual, inescapable racism. And though her freedoms as a famous Westerner in Arabia gratified her — she jokingly mentions becoming a capital-P "Person" — they're also a reminder of the curtailed freedoms of others. (She arranged educational lectures for women, but wrote, "They must work out their own salvation and it wouldn't help them to be actively backed by an infidel, even ... I who am permitted many things here.")

Given the sheer amount of material her life provides to the camera, it's not surprising Gertrude Bell's life has been made into a biopic by Werner Herzog, titled Queen of the Desert — a distinction that encapsulates why Gertrude's determinism has sometimes come under scrutiny. As often happens given the ways history repeats, Gertrude's legacy makes easy parallels to the present, from world powers trying to determine the political shape of the Middle East to women's struggles to be taken seriously by male colleagues. In A Woman in Arabia , she faces it all with humor, passion, and candor; even a century on, she's a woman worth knowing.

Genevieve Valentine's latest novel is Persona.

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Early in “Queen of the Desert,” Gertrude Bell’s father recounts a story to her about her first words spoken as a child that encompasses the entirety of her identity and disposition. Apparently, when her nanny tried to put her in a dress she pushed the woman away and proudly exclaimed “On my own!” Bell is quickly established as an impetuous, headstrong, and intelligent woman, disregarding social mores at every turn. That she’s a woman in the late 1800s, when the story begins, yearning to explore the world rather than be saddled with an ill-suited marriage makes her all the more remarkable. The film briefly flirts with the idea that maybe Bell was simply born in the wrong time. But has there ever been a time accepting women this fearsome, bright, and independent? Despite the rich biographical material of the real-life woman on which this is based and the skill of the filmmakers involved, “Queen of the Desert” ends up being an emotionally empty, thematically ill-defined, and listless affair. It is never able to communicate the complexity of the woman at its center.

The story begins in 1898 as Bell (played by Nicole Kidman ) rankles her parents with desires of exploring the world and challenging herself intellectually instead of finding the appropriate suitor. She’s quickly shipped off to relatives in Tehran in the hope she’ll find some satisfaction. The narrative tracks her life and travels leading up to her collaboration with Winston Churchill ( Christopher Fulford ) in mapping the borders of Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. This is the time of the Ottoman Empire’s last days as various nations become mired in World War I. International upheaval, as viewed from the intimate vantage point of a historical figure as enchanting and modern feeling as Bell, gives the filmmakers a variety of avenues to explore. But instead of hinging the emotional through-line on her ambition, proto-feminist leanings, or what made her so well-suited to navigating the tribal conflicts, the film focuses on the most prosaic aspect of this fascinating woman: her love life.

This is already a curious decision on its own. But that there is no blistering chemistry, no charm, no intensity in the romantic storylines makes matters worse. I’d rather further explore Bell’s inquisitiveness than watch Kidman try (and fail) to convince us that she’s in enamored with James Franco , who plays the first love interest Henry Cadogan. Franco is lost in the period trappings. Whenever he wasn’t onscreen I forgot he was in the film altogether. The dynamic he develops with Kidman is neither a convincing portrait of passion nor an evocation of two intellectual equals coming together. That this love story, which consumes much of the beginning of the film, is meant to be a crucial part of Bell’s characterization is laughable. This is the man that has her so undone after seeming so sure of her own independence? Bell’s more interesting romantic entanglement that bookends the film is with Charles Doughty-Wylie (an intriguing Damian Lewis ), a married British Army officer. Bell also has a lovely (and blessedly platonic) rapport with colleague, T.E. Lawrence ( Robert Pattinson ). Both Lewis and Pattinson bring very different energies, leading their scenes to intermittently spark with a much-needed liveliness. It isn't quite enough, though. And while Kidman is dedicated to the role, this is one of her most pallid performances in recent memory.

On paper, this seems like the perfect role for Kidman, a typically resplendent and magnetic performer. Even in the worst films she’s committed to mining the trials of her characters to make a larger point about humanity. But even she can’t bring much gravitas to a film that seems to lack any cohesive thematic perspective. Writer/director Werner Herzog makes the fatal error of confusing loving his star and subject with understanding her. The lugubrious voiceover provides no deeper understanding of Bell. If anything, it makes her seem like even more of cipher. In forming such a reverential biopic the humanity of these characters and Herzog's own wildness are whittled away, leaving the mere husk of a more interesting story behind. Every  obstacle Bell encounters melts too quickly in the face of her wit and intelligence. She’s a vision of perfection. At times, she’s lit in a way that her blonde hair radiates as if a halo making her seem even more angelic. But perfection isn’t interesting in a biopic such as this; it’s a death knell.

It’s clear Herzog is trying to craft “Queen of the Desert” within the lineage of the traditional star vehicle. From the epic “Gone with the Wind” to the intense “The Little Foxes,” classic Hollywood was able to create films that operated as lush, at times bombastic spectacles in order to showcase the strengths of their leading ladies. But instead of heightening Kidman’s qualities—her luminescence, chilliness, and finely wrought emotional intelligence—“Queen of the Desert” flattens these traits. It takes more than a sweeping score, beautiful cinematography, and drawn out narrative to make an engaging star vehicle. More than anything they require a strong personality and point of view from both director and star, which is regrettably in short supply here.

"Queen of the Desert" is so focused on Bell's romantic life that it fails to develop anything else about her. What pulls this woman to explore these different cultures and face-off with far more powerful men keen on underestimating her? At one point Bell says in voiceover, “For the first time in my life I know who I am.” By the end of the film I still didn’t. Instead I was left with questions. Why was Bell so drawn to her line of work? How did she reckon with being so blindingly ambitious in a time in which the exact opposite was encouraged in women of her stature? What drew her to specifically travel this part of the world? While the people around her cringingly toast to the British Empire with little care to the colonization that makes their wealth possible, Bell genuinely cares for the people she crosses in her travels through the Middle East. She garners their respect and admiration in turn for reasons the film never seeks to explore with much depth. The decision to focus on Bell’s romantic life as the core of the story could be more worthwhile if any characters had a psychological richness to them.

One of the biggest mistakes of “Queen of the Desert” is in not interrogating the  nature of Bell’s ambition. Currently, women’s ambition is at a premium. It’s  seen in the marketing of brands, the recently erected bronze “Fearless Girl”  statue in Wall Street, and explored in recent works like " Big Little Lies ."  This gives Bell’s struggle between her own desires and social constraints a timely  quality. Ambition, particularly for women, is a tricky attribute. It’s a trait shaped by  class, race, and access. It can be both destructive and admirable. For Bell it  comes across as both, given what’s sacrificed at the altar of her pursuit of  intellectual and professional desires. It’s a worthwhile subject matter to  explore. Unfortunately, it’s given only cursory interest in various one-liners  about Bell’s independence or in the simplistically rendered showdowns she  has with powerful men, as if that is enough. 

“Queen of the Desert” demonstrates how staid a biopic can become when it forgets the icons at its center were also once human beings teeming with dreams, sins yearnings and contradictions. People are drawn to these kinds of stories not to see beautiful recreations of facts they can look up on Wikipedia but to take an intimate view on the human beings that made history.

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Film Credits

Queen of the Desert (2017)

Rated PG-13 for brief nudity and some thematic elements.

128 minutes

Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell

Christopher Fulford as Winston Churchill

James Franco as Henry Cadogan

Robert Pattinson as Col. T.E. Lawrence

Damian Lewis as Charles Doughty-Wylie

Jenny Agutter as Florence Bell

• Werner Herzog

Cinematographer

• Peter Zeitlinger
• Klaus Badelt

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DESERT QUEEN

The extraordinary life of gertrude bell--adventurer, adviser to kings, ally of lawrence of arabia.

by Janet Wallach ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 9, 1996

The life of Gertrude Bell (18681926)—bluestocking, Oxfordian, orientalist—told in mind-addling detail by Wallach (coauthor, The New Palestinians, 1992, etc.). This biography of Bell—Britain's woman in Mesopotamia during the early part of this century—is a near day-by-day account of her life, relying heavily on Bell's correspondence and diaries to set the tone of the narrative (long on intimacy, short on analysis). Wallach deploys the linear mode of historical storytelling: She opens with the Bell clan amassing their millions in the ironworks of Northumbria and closes with Bell's suicide. In between are her early years at the family manses Red Barns and Rounton Grange; her first-class degree in modern history from Oxford; her years abroad, always moving in diplomatic circles (the parties, the dress fittings, the search for a mate) until she gets her first taste of the East in Persia. Forget about men—though Wallach tries hard to insinuate them into the story as often as possible, it's clear from this moment on that Bell's destiny is not with a person but with a place, and that place is turn-of-the-century Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia. Money allowed her to ramble; she got to know the land and people and archaeology. And when called, she did her bit for the empire: spying on the Turks and Germans, giving T.E. Lawrence the lowdown on tribal ways, sweating away the war years in Baghdad and Basrah. As intimate advisor to Iraq's King Faisal, she whispered the colonial office's wishes into his ear. The rub here is in the details—too many, and they dampen, at times suffocate, the narrative: ``A cigarette and a cup of thick Turkish coffee at her side, she munched pistachio nuts and studied.'' From the swarm of particulars emerges a curious soul—hard traveler, hack for Empire, cosmopolite, iconoclast, anti-suffragist—a complex, absorbing character, long overdue for study. (30 b&w photos, 4 maps, not seen)

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1996

ISBN: 0-385-47408-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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BOOK REVIEW

by Janet Wallach

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

More by Elie Wiesel

by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

From mean streets to wall street.

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Gertrude bell: queen of the desert, shaper of nations.

by Georgina Howell

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, 512 pp., 16 pp. illus. $27.50 (hardcover) Reviewed by Julia M. Asher-Greve

The book under review is the most recent of numerous biographies of Gertrude L. Bell (1868-1926), one of the most famous (British) women of her generation. It is admittedly difficult to do justice to Bell’s many achievements, which include an excellent translation of Persian poetry, some of the best travel writing, exploration, archaeology, cartography, ethnography and, last but not least, politics. But Georgina Howell (known for her books and articles on fashion) presents a version of Bell’s life more hagiographic than biographic; the author admits that Bell is “my heroine,” extending her adulation to Bell’s step-mother, and subscribes unconditionally to Bell’s views. The book is devoid of any critical evaluation or contextual knowledge of Middle Eastern history, Iraqi politics and archaeology. Surprisingly this book was on the shortlist for Britain’s most prestigious non-fiction prize (the Samuel Johnson Prize) in 2007, but I don’t think it rises to that level. Currently, the best book on Gertrude Bell is Liora Lukitz’s A Quest in the Middle East: Gertrude Bell and the Making of Iraq (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).

Gertrude Lowthian Bell was born into a wealthy industrial family, with relatively progressive views concerning her upbringing and education that allowed her to develop her talents and pursue diverse interests and projects. She also benefited from her family’s connections among the social, political, economic, intellectual and artistic elites. One of the first women to graduate (with highest honors) from Oxford in 1888 (she could not receive an official degree because women were ineligible to receive degrees until 1920), she continued to satisfy her hunger for knowledge with education at home and with the help of private teachers.

Since her first travel abroad to Germany in 1887, Bell knew travel could enlarge knowledge. Between her graduation and her first expedition to the “Orient,” she traveled to many parts of the world. At age 33 she embarked for the first time alone on a voyage to the Near East, residing in Jerusalem, taking intensive Arabic lessons, traveling widely in the region, and spending her time largely among Muslim men who treated her as an “honorary man.” Thus could she, for the first time, escape the constraints of her gender, as many other women travelers in the “Orient” experienced. For the following 28 years, until her death, the “Orient” became the focus of Bell’s life and work. She conducted expeditions, surveys, archaeological excavations and finally, during and after World War I, was engaged in administrative/political capacities. Howell is no exception in emphasizing Bell’s work in intelligence-gathering and the British post-war administration. But these tasks were common among archaeologists who excavated in the Near East before World War I as they were among the few familiar with Arabic, local geography, customs and people. Unusual about Bell was that she was the only woman. Using her connections, she gained influence in the political arena and in the formative process of the Iraqi state. Like many of her male colleagues, she had no prior administrative or political experience, but her knowledge of the Near East was a rare asset.

Bell was one of only two women (the other is Jane Dieulafoy 1 who excavated in the Near East at the beginning of the 20th century, the only one who conducted expeditions to remote areas accompanied only by local men, and the only woman working in an official political position in the Near East during and after World War I. But after her death, Bell’s achievements soon vanished from public memory. Archaeologists were among the few who did not forget, because Bell founded the Iraq Museum and left a legacy for The British School of Archaeology in Iraq. She published her expeditions and archaeological work in the Near East in several books and articles of which The Desert and the Sown (1907) became a bestseller, reprinted several times and translated into several languages. Bell’s archaeological books and thousands of photographs are still valuable sources for archaeologists and art historians 2 Her talent as a writer is also evident in her letters to her family. 3

Bell is considered “unique” because she was one of the few women in her generation who succeeded in more than one area; only her contemporary Jane Dieulafoy, the French explorer, archaeologist, travel writer, novelist and war heroine compares in courage, endurance, erudition and literary ability. Bell corresponded with Jane’s husband Marcel Dieulafoy, and the two women probably met in Paris. Even if Bell had not been involved in the creation of Iraq, she would still count among the most accomplished women. Her fame, however, rests predominantly on her influence in Middle Eastern political affairs.

In the late 1970s Bell had a comeback in feminist and gender studies, and as a controversial figure in the ongoing Orientalist debate initiated by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978). Interest in Bell also reappeared when Iraq made headlines. During the Gulf war and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bell was mentioned in numerous articles and books, often together with Lawrence of Arabia as the two most influential British officials in Middle Eastern politics and the ill-fated creation of Iraq, an artificial state whose history is saturated with rebellions, military coups, massacres, assassinations and wars. Subsequent to the occupation of Baghdad and looting of the Iraq Museum in 2003, several biographies were published, rendering Howell’s popular version of Bell’s life somewhat superfluous. A more critical biography, absent until now, would better serve Bell’s prodigious talents.

1. E. Gran-Amyrich, “Jane Dieulafoy, 1851-1916,” in G.M. Cohen and M.J. Joukowsky, eds., Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2004; paperback edition 2006), pp. 34-67.

2. J.M. Asher-Greve, “Gertrude L. Bell (1868-1926),” in Cohen and Joukowsky, eds., Breaking Ground , pp. 142-197.

3. Bell’s diaries and letters to her family are published on the Web site: www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk .

Julia M. Asher-Greve is a prominent figure in the field of women and gender studies. She is co-founder of the Women’s Association of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, as well as NIN: Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity .

This book review originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review , Jul/Aug 2008, 68, 70.

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• Authors & Illustrators

Georgina Howell

Queen of the desert.

Queen of the Desert is the compelling story of Gertrude Bell, archaeologist, linguist, and author whose passion for the Arab peoples turned her into an architect of the independent kingdom of Iraq, a role driven by an unyielding spirit. Drawing heavily on Gertrude's personal diaries and letters, journalist Georgina Howell paints an intimate portrait of a Victorian woman who gave up her world of privilege and plenty to navigate the complex geopolitics of the Middle East. On the pages of Iraqi history, Gertrude Bell leaves an enduring, indelible mark, seeing its first king Faisal safely onto the throne in 1921. Originally published as Daugher of the Desert , Gertrude's powerful story is a compelling portrait of a woman who woman who transcended the restrictions of her class and age and in so doing created a remarkable and enduring legacy. Not all queens wear a crown, some carry a compass.

Books by Georgina Howell

Desert Queen Book Discussion

Members of a monthly book club met to discuss Desert Queen , by Janet Wallach . The book focuses on the life of Gertrude Bell, a contemporary of Lawrence of Arabia who helped to draw the boundaries for the British Middle Eastern territories in 1918.

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• Borders Books and Music Borders Books and Music

Airing Details

• Jan 25, 1997 | 8:40pm EST | C-SPAN 2
• Jan 25, 1997 | 11:40pm EST | C-SPAN 2
• Jan 26, 1997 | 5:33am EST | C-SPAN 2

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Berlin 2015: Queen of the Desert review – a towering Nicole Kidman goes there and back again

Werner Herzog’s biopic of English adventurer Gertrude Bell is impeccably mounted, competently made, entirely respectable – and a bit of a plod

H ere is the kind of film that you can hardly believe is the work of Werner Herzog who has written and directed it. It is grown-up, respectable and historical, perfectly competently made, lots of accents and period dressing-up … and just the tiniest bit dull.

Queen of the Desert is an expansive and solemn biopic of Gertrude Bell, played by Nicole Kidman as a cousin to the doughty Englishwoman-abroad role she had in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia. Bell was the British traveller, scholar and orientalist of the early 20th century who, like TE Lawrence, took a patrician interest in the Arab peoples who were yearning to throw off the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. She made a remarkable contribution to creating the kingdoms and nation states of what is now known as the Middle East. The sheikhs were perhaps intended to be the equivalent of British India’s complaisant maharajahs. That was before oil was discovered.

Bell is thought of as a female Lawrence of Arabia, and there can be doubt that Herzog had David Lean’s great picture somewhere in his mind as he made this. The orchestral score even appears to quote from Maurice Jarre’s undulating Lawrence theme. But where is the eroticism, the ambiguity and the danger of Lawrence’s O’Toole? I would have thought that Herzog would plunge, chaotically and subversively, into the erotic charge of desert adventure. But no. Bell commands opaque respect from the Bedouins and incites a doomed, suppressed passion in British men: an unfortunate repeat pattern of disaster which the movie leaves tactfully unexamined.

Headstrong, beautiful Bell is at first described in highly abusive and ungallant terms by the British army types who resent her interference in diplomatic affairs. But Herzog soon shows us that her beauty is unconventional only in that she is tall. Nicole Kidman makes some of the other characters look as small as Hobbits. Bored to tears on the family estate, Gertrude persuades her papa to send her out to foreign climes and here her beauty and brilliance capture the heart of raffish junior British diplomat Henry Cadogan, played by James Franco. This actor certainly puts the “cad” in Cadogan, but his very odd English accent and cheesy ingratiating grin makes him look and sound like some lost member of the Monkees. Bell’s father does not approve of this man and the liaison does not end well.

Perhaps in flight from her internal emotional turmoil, Bell cultivates her passionate interest in the Bedouin tribesmen and displaces her need for romantic love outwards – into the desert. There she is to encounter Lawrence himself, played boyishly by Robert Pattinson . He looks a little self-conscious in the headdress – though perhaps no more self-conscious than Lawrence himself looked in it. His appearance got a few laughs from the Berlin festival audience, but Pattinson carried off this (minor) role well enough.

She also meets another Englishman, Charles Doughty-Wylie, played by Damian Lewis , who at first appears to be just another blithering British officer who is infuriated by Bell’s impetuous expeditions into difficult areas, ostensibly because she is upsetting the apple-cart, but really because they realise that this civilian has the imagination and flair which is showing them up. But soon Wylie is entranced by Bell’s beauty and his marriage is under strain.

And so the movie plods on. Bell journeys out into that magnificent landscape, comes back, goes out, comes back. Her courage commands the respect of the tribesmen for whom she becomes the uncrowned “queen of the desert”. But Bell does not seem to grow up or become different in any appreciable way in the course of this longish film. Everything is pretty buttoned-up. As for Kidman herself, she does a perfectly reasonable job with this difficult role and she is well cast. But she never cuts loose, never unleashes the kind of rage, or love, or despair that you sense is simmering inside.

• Queen of the Desert
• First look review
• Berlin film festival 2015
• Berlin film festival
• Nicole Kidman
• Werner Herzog

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Queen of the desert, common sense media reviewers.

Strong female character in otherwise dull, lifeless drama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie champions Gertrude Bell but is slightly

The movie serves as an introduction to Gertrude Be

Brief guns and shooting; main character slightly w

The main character's breasts show through a we

A use of "bitch."

Social drinking. Characters pass a bottle of scotc

Parents need to know that Queen of the Desert is director Werner Herzog's biographical drama about Gertrude Bell, an English writer and explorer. There's some violence -- including guns and shooting, with a bloody scratch shown. The main character (who's played by Nicole Kidman) is held hostage…

Positive Messages

The movie champions Gertrude Bell but is slightly unclear regarding her achievements. The closing credits crawl suggests that while she did her best to honor her Arabic friends, her English colleagues may have undermined her efforts.

Positive Role Models

The movie serves as an introduction to Gertrude Bell, who insisted on being her own woman/person in every situation and refused to be treated as anything less. She chose a life of education, exploration, discovery, and achievement over a life of family, which may be troubling to some viewers but inspirational to others. Either way, she's a fascinating figure, and the movie could inspire viewers to conduct further reading and research.

Violence & Scariness

Brief guns and shooting; main character slightly wounded (bloody scratch). A man talks about hunting and shooting elephants. The main character is held captive for a brief time. Goat heads shown (as food).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The main character's breasts show through a wet gown while she bathes. She passionately kisses two men. Sex is suggested (nothing graphic shown). A man invites her for "fornication" in a barn.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Social drinking. Characters pass a bottle of scotch; main character wakes up with a painful hangover. Mention of "hashish."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Queen of the Desert is director Werner Herzog 's biographical drama about Gertrude Bell, an English writer and explorer. There's some violence -- including guns and shooting, with a bloody scratch shown. The main character (who's played by Nicole Kidman ) is held hostage for a brief time, there's discussion of hunting elephants, and goat heads (used for food) are shown. Bell's breasts are visible as she bathes while wearing a white gown. She also kisses two men, and sex is suggested but not shown. Another man invites her for "fornication" in a barn. She drinks from a bottle of scotch and wakes up with a painful hangover. Other social drinking is shown, and "hashish" is mentioned. The word "bitch" is used once. Though the movie is beautiful, and the main character is inspirational, the storytelling is lifeless and dull. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In QUEEN OF THE DESERT, Gertrude Bell ( Nicole Kidman ) lives in England near the turn of the 20th century. She's received an excellent education at Oxford, and while her parents want her to marry, she'd rather see the world. She begins in Iran, where she meets poetry-loving Henry Cadogan ( James Franco ) and falls for him. Later, jilted, she dedicates herself to exploring the Middle East, learning language, writing, braving danger, and eventually becoming a kind of diplomat. She meets T.E. Lawrence ( Robert Pattinson ), nearly has an affair with army officer Charles Doughty-Wylie ( Damian Lewis ), and eventually helps Winston Churchill (Christopher Fulford) in drawing the borders between Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

Is It Any Good?

It's rather confounding that one of the world's boldest, most curious filmmakers could take a bold, curious subject like Gertrude Bell and make such a dull, inert (if pretty) movie about her. But Werner Herzog 's Queen of the Desert sat, unreleased, for two years after poor early reviews, and it's easy to see why. In spite of the talented cast, Herzog's great eye for outdoor compositions, lush widescreen cinematography, and a dreamy score -- perhaps in an effort to recall the story's close cousin, Lawrence of Arabia -- the movie simply doesn't move.

Bell is painted as a fearless, endlessly curious woman, and it's difficult not to admire her, but aside from getting her heart broken by two clueless men, not much of consequence happens to her from scene to scene. In one sequence, she's held prisoner for several weeks at the whim of an Emir, but she doesn't look any the worse for wear after she gives him a withering comment and walks out. Many scenes are set up -- in one, she receives a magnificent "stolen" horse as a gift -- and then dropped (she trades it for camels, offscreen, with no drama or consequences). Perhaps someday, Ms. Bell will receive a movie worthy of her legacy.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Queen of the Desert 's violence . Despite the talk of violence, how much is actually shown? How intense is it? What effect does it have?

Is Gertrude Bell a role model ? Why or why not?

What makes her so open to learning about and understanding other cultures? Why are others so scared, or violent, toward others?

How does this movie compare to other biographical movies about powerful women? How many can you think of?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 7, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : September 26, 2017
• Cast : Nicole Kidman , James Franco , Robert Pattinson
• Director : Werner Herzog
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : IFC Films
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 110 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : brief nudity and some thematic elements
• Last updated : June 20, 2023

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Queen of the Desert (2015)

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