This book lost my affections at page 69, when the author criticized London’s National Portrait Gallery. In 2004, the “Gallery mounted an exhibition of portraits of pioneering women travellers called “Off the Beaten Track’” which included several pieces devoted to Bell. “The short four-line caption – all that was devoted to her – stated: ‘Despite her own achievements she actively opposed British women being given the right to vote.’ Technically correct, the statement is nonetheless a crude assessment of her ultimate intentions and one that takes no account of the complex politics of the times, or her position as a daughter of the Industrial Revolution.” Maybe. But the woman actually joined the freaking Anti-Suffrage League. (72). She was on the wrong side of history in a real, demonstrable way. The book gives it a fig leaf – (woman’s lives were hard and having to decide how to vote would make them harder!) That does not in any way persuade me. Plus the author favorably compares her to Margaret Thatcher.

The book is well written; the pages mostly flew by (though I could have done with less time in the mountains; I get it, she had indomitable will and no patience with obstacles). The author clearly had great affection for this woman, who clearly was remarkable. Bell materially helped her country win a world war and helped draw the maps in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. She was given a hero’s funeral in Iraq and her dog shipped back to England, even though she had made more local provision for his care. I liked the subtle metaphor there. But I can’t say the book made me like her.