Bell of the Desert

A grand historical novel about Gertrude Bell, one of the most influential women of the twentieth century.

She was the most celebrated adventurer of her day, the brains behind Lawrence of Arabia, an adviser to kings and desert sheikhs, and the British government’s secret weapon in WWI in the campaign against the Turks. A brilliant academic, mountaineer, explorer, linguist, politician, and towering literary figure, Gertrude Bell is the most significant unsung heroine of the twentieth century.

Alan Gold’s meticulously researched novel accurately opens history’s pages on a peerless woman who broke all molds on how Victorian women were supposed to behave—socially, intellectually, and physically. Guiding the events of the day in open, sanctioned diplomacy and adventure all across the Middle East, her influence on the men at the vanguard of history, and her unparalleled skill in sculpting the pathways and influences of the English, French, and Arab allies on the region, all lead to perhaps her greatest achievement: single-handedly creating today’s Iraq. Told as a biographical narrative of history, Alan Gold reveals that, more than any other single figure, it was this extraordinary woman who most determinedly fashioned the Arab world as we know it today.

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Alan Gold continues as an influential columnist for the Spectator, the Australian, and other highly regarded magazines and related media. He appears regularly in the media as a commentator on human rights and international politics. Several of his twenty-plus books have been optioned for movies. Alan lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and three children.

“Gold offers an interesting, imaginative chronicle of an extraordinary woman present at the creation of post-colonial Arab-Western tensions. A dense, highly detailed fictional yin to the yang of Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A superb account of a historical woman.” —Historical Novel Society