Gertrude Bell’s Moment in the Middle East: A Reappraisal

An explorer, archaeologist, scholar, writer, and policymaker, Gertude Bell was a colourful figure who played an outsize role in the history of the Middle East in the early twentieth century.

This book carefully examines Bell’s published and unpublished letters, diaries, notes, and publications to reconstruct and reevaluate Bell’s intentions and legacy in the Middle East in the aftermath of the First World War. It focuses on her correspondence with senior figures to examine the well-networked Bell as a policymaker in waiting. It also reappraises Bell’s role in the formation of the Kingdom of Iraq, assessing her public statements in support of Faisal, Iraq’s future king, against the doubts she expressed in private. Centering her own experience and reflections in the context of wider events, it adds nuance to perceptions of Bell as an agent of the British Empire and explores the legacy of her actions in Iraq today.

Liora Lukitz holds a PhD from LSE and an award from the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation that made possible the publication of three books and many articles. She is also the author of A Quest in the Middle East: Gertrude Bell and the Making of Modern Iraq (I.B. Tauris, 2006) and the upcoming title Ancient History and Technology, New Concepts of Communication (2025)