Our speaker, Gordon Hetherington, will talk about Gertrude Bell, the Uncrowned Queen of Iraq.
Gertrude was brought up in Redcar as a member of a wealthy family of iron and steel manufacturers. She had an unusual career being educated at Oxford University at a time when there were few women undergraduates.
She became the foremost women mountaineer of her time and then started a series of epic adventures in the deserts of the Ottoman Empire which led her becoming the leading expert on the Middle East During WW1. She was attached to the British Forces during the invasion of Mesopotamia and was heavily involved in the formation of the new state of Iraq.
She died aged 58 in Bagdad.