Oddlet: Gertrude Bell · 1 min read
Oct 14, 2026
Too Great a Strain
Gertrude Bell took a first at Oxford before Oxford gave women degrees, climbed ten new Alpine routes in a single season, and in March 1921, in a Cairo hotel, picked Iraq's king.
Gertrude Bell took a first-class Oxford degree in Modern History in two years, at a time when Oxford did not yet award women degrees at all. She climbed ten new routes in the Bernese Alps in a single season. She spoke Arabic, Persian, French, German and Italian, and in 1913 rode 1,800 miles across Arabia with a canvas bathtub and a Wedgwood dinner service in her camel bags.
In March 1921, in Cairo, she picked a king.
Churchill had convened the Colonial Office's "Forty Thieves" to decide what to do with the wreckage of the Ottoman Middle East. Bell was the only official woman in the room. She had already chosen Faisal ibn Hussein for the throne of the new country she and Percy Cox were stitching together out of three Ottoman provinces. She organised the referendum that installed him. It returned 96%. You do not get 96% by accident.
Then she went to Baghdad and briefed the new king on the tribes of his own country, inside his own palace. Faisal called her Ukhti. My sister.
She wrote to her father afterwards.
"You may rely upon one thing. I'll never engage in creating kings again. It's too great a strain."
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- Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University — Primary source: 1,600+ digitized letters, 16 diaries, ~7,000 photographs. Added to the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2017.
- Encyclopedia Britannica — Gertrude Bell — Standard biographical outline: dates, education, Middle East career, role in Iraq.
- English Heritage Blue Plaques — Gertrude Bell — Institutional biography covering family, education, career.
- UKClimbing — 'Gertrude Bell — the best of all Edwardian lady mountaineers?' — Detailed climbing record 1899–1904: La Meije, Engelhörner (10 routes, 1901), Finsteraarhorn (1902), Matterhorn (1904).
- Ronald Turnbull — 'Gertrude Bell and the Finsteraarhorn' — Detailed reconstruction of the 1902 north-east spur attempt with the Fuhrer brothers, the blizzard, and the rope epic.
- Newcastle Special Collections — 'Gertrude Bell and the 1921 Cairo Conference'
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