from Barzan Press
A Silver Legend: The Story of the Maria Theresa Thaler -
now available

At Talh market in northern Yemen, I once watched an old man pay for a fresh clip of Kalashnikov ammunition with some weighty silver coins. Neither Yemeni or Saudi riyals, these reassuringly hefty discs were date-stamped 1780 and bore the image of a large busty woman on one side, an impressively feathery eagle on the other. They were silver dollars of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the woman was Maria Theresa, empress from 1740 to 1780.  Kevin Rushby,  The Guardian,  follows Clara Semple on the trail of the coin that launched a thousand ships.  January 14, 2006



‘We shall, I trust, make it a centre of Arab civilisation and prosperity … ’. Gertrude Bell to her father as British troops entered Baghdad, March 1917

Gertrude Bell (2004)   Revised, enlarged and updated
A biography

Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian   1868-1926 
Traveler, archaeologist and Government official

Once the new Iraqi government "has been in existence a year people will begin not only to believe in it, but to be proud of being 'Iraqis,'" predicted one senior official. This story could have been plucked from last month's newspapers, but it happened in the summer of 1921. . the parallels between the two eras - stark and instructive - are clearly drawn in Gertrude Bell  - Lillian Kennett, TIME, March 14, 2005

see also  Gertrude Bell - in the news  Iraq’s Uncrowned Queen Gertrude Bell made key contributions to Iraq’s development says Edward Marriot, BBC History Magazine

see also  Al Khutun, the fearless - in the news  Profile of Gertrude Bell the expert, written by HVF Winstone in The Times

By HVF Winstone

Gertrude Bell was the daughter of one of the wealthiest families of late 19th century England, ironmasters, founders of vast chemical and aluminium industries, the first woman to obtain a first-class degree in modern history at Oxford, the first woman in British history to be made an officer of the military intelligence service, king maker and power broker of Iraq in the years that followed the end of the First World War and the break up of the Ottoman Empire. In the words of Rebecca West she was anticipated by Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley Keeldar, ‘the incarnation of the emancipated heiress, using the gold given her by the industrial revolution to buy not privilege but the opportunity for noble performance’. Victor Winstone’s distinguished biography is now re-issued by Barzan Publishing in a revised, enlarged and supplemented edition, which places it at the centre of a controversial contemporary scene.

Introduction to revised edition,  HVF Winstone  - "As I write this introduction to a third major edition, Iraq once again lies desolate. The USA and Britain are in illegal occupation of the country, the fourth such foreign presence since 1918. The lessons that were visited on Britain in that first occupation, which ended in 1932 when Iraq was formally received into the League of Nations, were well documented, not least in Gertrude’s letters and official communications of the 1920s, but they did not impose on President Bush or Prime Minister Blair in 2003. Past events  were repeated with sinister exactness and their consequences  largely ignored. " (January 2004)

The personal narrative style which Bell adopts in her letter to her mother, reveals the human being behind the formidable façade of the British heiress to an industrial fortune. Her salutation “Dearest Mother” is heart-warming. - Susan Chenard, October 2004

>>> more

UK £ 19.95

(US $ 36.00 approx exchange)
Barzan Publishing 
24 pp black & white photographs
ISBN 0-9547728-0-6 (504 pages)
 

Reviews

Sue Robinson,  North Devon Journal, Past Meets Present 21October 2004  - Eminent author HVF Winstone is back in the limelight with his biography of Gertrude Bell – 26 years after it was first published. This revised, re-worked and expanded hardback edition has been updated following the war in Iraq and contains a controversial new introduction by the author. In it he condemns the actions of President Bush and Tony Blair… The author…has skilfully managed to capture the very essence of the woman, using lyrical language and a sophisticated style in a painstakingly researched biography.

Robert Fisk, INDEPENDENT,  11 October 2004 - I am indebted to HVF Winstone's splendid and revised biography of Britain's 'oriental secretary' in Baghdad

Publication [in 2004]  coincides with the 84th anniversary of the League of Nation’s decision to hand Britain the mandate for the land that had changed its identity from Mesopotamia to Iraq (1920) & the 90th anniversary of the arrival of Britain’s Expeditionary Force ‘D’ in Mesopotamia to fight Turkish occupiers (1914)

.. Any biography of Gertrude Bell is fine. I picked the one by Winstone because it seemed to me the one that has the most information.
David Fromkin, Boston University - NPR Talk of the Nation

The definitive biography of ‘The Lady’ (Jan Morris, THE TIMES), it is a must-read for those who want to know the history behind the headlines covering the occupation of Iraq in 2003

Adventurer, archaeologist and arabist, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was a counsellor to Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, and a confidante of sheikhs. To T E Lawrence she was ‘Gerty,’ and he was her ‘Little One.’ She cut a unique figure in the turbulent politics of the Middle East at the turn of last century.

Wilfred Thesiger, when asked to compare Gertrude with her successor Freya Stark, replied: "If any one woman was to be thought of as a serious traveller, it had to be Gertrude Bell." She was a vital source of intelligence to the British Government during the First World War.

Instrumental in defining modern Iraq’s borders, and in choosing its first king, she was generally considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire.

A bluestocking explorer, Miss Bell travelled alone with local male guides through the desert, but at home in England she couldn't go to the British Museum without a chaperone. She founded the national museum and library in Baghdad, and worked tirelessly to preserve the archaeological treasures of Babylon and Assyria.

 The author doesn’t spare his heroine, whose colonialist actions, however noble in intention, left a stain on the West’s relations with the Middle East.

Jonathan Raban, SUNDAY TIMES - Winstone really shines in his role as guide to the labyrinth of Middle East politics

Patrick Seale, OBSERVER  - Honest, thoroughly researched and gracefully written ... a sharp, credible portrait