Past Perfect: Under a Desert Sky

In 921, the British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, convened an international summit to discuss the fate of England’s Arab territories. The guest list for the Cairo Conference included Arab potentates, European diplomats, future heads-of-state and one extraordinary woman: the indomitable Gertrude Bell. The daughter of a wealthy English industrialist, Gertrude Bell (1868–1926) spent most of her adult life flouting convention. At the age of 17, she shocked London society by enrolling at Oxford University—where she studied modern history and became the first woman to graduate with honors. After college, she took up Alpine climbing and joined the suffragette movement. […]