She was not a feminist she had no need or wish for special treatment. I loved the way she dressed and the way she lived-so stylishly, a pistol strapped to her calf under silk petticoats and dresses of lace and tucked muslin, her desert table laid with crisp linen and silver, her cartridges wrapped in white stockings and pushed into the toes of her Yapp canvas boots. When I started to write about Gertrude Bell I revered her as one of those heroines of the Wilder Shores who followed their romantic notions here and there about the world. "But can we get through those mountains?" She would not have cared that in an opening sequence of the popular 1997 film The English Patient, her name was taken in vain by British soldiers poring over a map spread out on a folding table in a camouflage tent: The feature, published that October, provoked the biggest mailbag I'd had in thirty-six years of journalism.Īt one time more famous than Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Bell chose to compete on male terms in a masculine world. Philip Norman, whose award-winning interviews have captured the magic and madness of rock 'n' roll Vatican expert John Cornwell of Jesus College, Cambridge Bryan Appleyard, who can explain advanced science and make it gloriously readable and others were tucking into our duck en croûte when each of us was invited to write a feature for a series to be entitled "My Hero." I returned home excited: I knew who "My Heroine" would be, and I thought a reminder of her glorious life was overdue. As contract writers for The Sunday Times Magazine, we had collected for dinner in a London restaurant at the invitation of the editor Robin Morgan, to hear his thoughts for the new winter features.
Critics' Lists: Summer '07 Further Under the Radar: More Books Not to Miss
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