And she was so much more. Ever since I went to watch The English Patient at the cinema (where films should be seen), I was so angry and have wanted to write an article about Gertrude Bell ever since. It was the following exchange at the start of the film that set me off:
First officer: “But can we get through those mountains?”
Second officer: “The Bell maps show a way.”
First officer: “Let’s hope he was right.”
“He”? The ‘Bell maps’ were the only maps at the time that would show a way through the desert — but ‘Bell’ was a woman, not a ‘he’, she had created the maps for the Royal Geographic Society, and Lord Cromer, the former British Council General to Egypt, said of her in 1915: