Gertrude Bell

The British entered World War I in August 1914, and the Ottoman Empire entered the war in late October to early November. At the suggestion of Wyndham Deedes, the British War Office asked Bell for her assessment of the situation in Ottoman Syria, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. In response she wrote a letter detailing her thoughts on the degree of British sympathies in the region.[43][44]

Bell volunteered with the Red Cross, serving from November 1914–November 1915; first in Boulogne, France, and then later back in London. She was part of the Wounded & Missing Enquiry Department (W&MED) that attempted to coordinate information between the British Army, French hospitals, and worried families about the status of soldiers and casualties of the war.[43]

Coincidentally, Judith Doughty-Wylie, the wife of the man Bell was having an unconsumated affair with, was also stationed in Boulogne in this period. The two met and exchanged pleasantries. Bell asked Charles Doughty-Wylie in a letter to discourage his wife from any further meetings.[45][46]

St John Philby. Philby would later fall out with Bell and Faisal in 1921; he supported a republic for Iraq, and later served Ibn Saud in what would become Saudi Arabia.[47]

In November 1915, Bell was summoned to Cairo in the British protectorate of Egypt; she arrived on 30 November. The Cairo detachment of British officials, headed by Colonel (later Brigadier General) Gilbert Clayton and renowned archaeologist and historian Lt. Cmdr. David Hogarth, was called the Arab Bureau. She also again met T. E. Lawrence, who had joined the Arab Bureau in December 1914.[48][23] The Bureau set about organising and processing Bell's own, Lawrence's, and Capt. W. H. I. Shakespear's data about the location and disposition of Arab tribes of the Sinai and Gulf region. They also mapped the region, including its sources of water.[49] This information would later be of use to Lawrence during the Arab Revolt as to which tribes could be encouraged to join the British against the Ottoman Empire.[40][50][51][52]

Bell's stay in Cairo was short; she was soon sent to British India, arriving in February 1916, likely at the suggestion of journalist-turned-diplomat Valentine Chirol.[40] Her task in Delhi was to better coordinate the Arab Bureau with the Government of India and mediate their differences; according to Bell, "there was no kind of touch between us except rather bad tempered written telegrams!"[40] Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India and family friend of the Bells, was skeptical of the Arab Bureau's recent moves and promises of an independent Arab state, fearing that directly challenging the Ottoman Sultan's religious role as caliph could stir up unrest among India's substantial minority of Muslims. Bell's knowledge of the issues impressed Lord Hardinge, and she was soon sent on to Basra (captured by the British at the start of the war in November 1914) in March 1916 to act as a liaison between India and Cairo.[53] At the time, the British were still recovering from recent setbacks in the Mesopotamian campaign.[54] She joined the staff of Chief Political Officer Percy Cox as one of the few Westerners who knew the area.[55]

Cox found her an office in his headquarters, and she split her time between there and the Military GHQ Basra.[56] She travelled in the region between Basra and Baghdad, assessed the stance and opinions of the local inhabitants, and wrote reports and drew maps that would aid the British Army in their eventual advance on Baghdad.[55] Bell was unpaid at first, but Lord Chelmsford arranged for her to be given a formal paid position in June 1916. She became the only female political officer in the British forces and received the title of Percy Cox's Oriental Secretary.[57][58][52] During her Basra work, she struck up close working relationships with fellow political officers Reader Bullard and the young St. John Philby.[59]

Bell met Ibn Saud in Basra in late November–December 1916, as Cox and India were courting his support against the Ottoman-supporting Ibn Rashid. She was impressed with him and wrote an article in the Arab Bulletin extolling his abilities as a "politician, ruler, and raider."[60] Ibn Saud was apparently less impressed with her; according to a later account by Philby, he mimicked her feminine and higher-pitched style of speech as an impression and joke to later Nejd audiences.[60][61] She would later, in 1920, presciently warn Lawrence that he was overestimating Sharif Hussein's position after war between him and Ibn Saud broke out, and that Ibn Saud was likely to defeat the Hejaz if the struggle continued.[62]

While in the Middle East, Gertrude Bell reported on the Armenian genocide. Contrasting the killings with previous massacres, she wrote that earlier killings "were not comparable to the massacres carried out in 1915 and the succeeding years."[63] Bell also reported that in Damascus, "Ottomans sold Armenian women openly in the public market."[64] In an intelligence report, Bell quoted a statement by a Turkish prisoner-of-war:

The battalion left Aleppo on 3 February and reached Ras al-Ain in twelve hours....some 12,000 Armenians were concentrated under the guardianship of some hundred Kurds...These Kurds were called gendarmes, but in reality mere butchers; bands of them were publicly ordered to take parties of Armenians, of both sexes, to various destinations, but had secret instructions to destroy the males, children and old women...One of these gendarmes confessed to killing 100 Armenian men himself...the empty desert cisterns and caves were also filled with corpses...No man can ever think of a woman's body except as a matter of horror, instead of attraction, after Ras al-Ain."[65][59]

After British troops took Baghdad, on 11 March 1917, Bell was summoned by Cox to the city.[66] She was also given the honour of Commander of the Order of the British Empire.[67][68] After Cox left Mesopotamia in 1918 for England and then Persia, control fell to Arnold Wilson, the Acting British Civil Commissioner in Mesopotamia. Initially, Bell and Wilson got along; a memorandum Bell wrote in February 1919, "Self-Determination in Mesopotamia", did not show major differences with Wilson.[69] Cox and Wilson's wartime provisional government drew on British India for inspiration, replicating its legal code and bureaucratic structure, and Bell's assessment was that this was keeping the Iraqi people content.[70] Bell visited France and England in 1919, attending the Paris Peace Conference for a short time in Wilson's stead.[71] At Paris, plans for the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire came into shape, as negotiations over which territories should be distributed to who took place. Famously, the Sykes–Picot Agreement, negotiated by the same Mark Sykes whom Bell had met 15 years earlier, allocated northern Syria to French influence, although the French were persuaded to withdraw their claims on Mosul vilayet to Syria's east. This left the British and Arabs with southern Syria, Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra to divide.

Bell spent September–October 1919 visiting Egypt, Palestine, and Hashemite-ruled Syria before returning to Baghdad in November 1919. In 1919, Mesopotamia was still under a provisional military government that largely reported to the government of British India. Over the course of 1919, Bell became convinced that an independent Arab government in Mesopotamia backed by British advisors was the correct path to follow. She saw the provisional Hashemite government in Syria, while corrupt, seemingly return life to a peaceful normal state; meanwhile, affairs in Egypt saw the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 against the British. Bell believed that the "spirit of 1919" would spread to Mesopotamia as well if the British dawdled in honouring the promise of self-determination.[72] She spent nearly a year writing what was later considered a masterly official report, "Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia".[73] Civil Commissioner Wilson disagreed with Bell on the topic, and the two had a falling out. Wilson, of the India school, preferred an Arab government to be under direct influence of British officials who would retain real control, as he felt, from experience, that Mesopotamian populations were not yet ready to govern and administer the country efficiently and peacefully. Troubles arose; Shia tribes in central Iraq rose in revolt in the summer of 1920, and made common cause with Sunnis. Wilson blamed Sharifan anti-British propaganda for the revolt.[74] Bell blamed Wilson for the unrest in the region, saying his approach was insufficiently deferential to local wishes.[75][76]

On 11 October 1920, Percy Cox returned to Baghdad, replacing the discredited Wilson. Cox asked Bell to continue as his Oriental Secretary and to act as liaison with the forthcoming Arab government. Cox promptly restored much of the earlier Ottoman government structure and began to appoint more Iraqis to lead in the local provincial governments, albeit backed by powerful British advisors.[77] Back in the British Isles, the British public was weary of constant war, the Irish War of Independence was being fought, and the British Empire was deeply in debt following the ruinous Great War.[75] British officials in London, in particular the new Secretary of State for War and Air, Winston Churchill, wanted to reduce expenses in the colonies, including the cost of quashing revolts. British officials realised that their policy of direct governance was adding to costs. While the revolt of 1920 was successfully suppressed, it had cost 50 million pounds, hundreds of British and Indian lives, and thousands of Arab lives to do so.[78][77] It was clear that Iraq would be cheaper as a self-governing state.[75] Churchill convened a conference in Cairo to resolve the future of British administration of the region now that the war was finished.[79]

Seated, from right: Winston Churchill, Herbert Samuel
Standing first row, from left: Gertrude Bell, Sassoon Eskell, Edmund Allenby, Jafar Pasha al-Askari

Photograph taken near the Pyramids; Bell is between Churchill and T. E. Lawrence beneath the Sphinx.

Bell, Cox and Lawrence were among a select group of "Orientalists" convened by Churchill to attend the conference in Cairo to determine the internal boundaries of the British mandates from within the territory Britain had claimed during the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.[80] Few British officials had any experience in Arab or Kurdish affairs; Cox trusted Bell, and Bell was thus unusually influential and gave significant input in these discussions.[75] The British government had reluctantly allowed France to take control of Syria as part of negotiations of the Treaty of Sèvres, leading to the creation of the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon. This complicated earlier British promises to its allies in the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans, as they had presumed they would lead a new pan-Arab state centred in Damascus; but the French saw the Hashemites and their allies as potential rivals for power, and thus had no interest in allowing a Hashemite monarchy in Syria.[70]

Various possibilities existed for these lands, including a continued direct mandate (the British Mandate for Mesopotamia), independence on various terms, or even ceding the discontented northern territories back to the new Turkish state. The school of thought that favoured independence with British direction and alliance became known as the "Cairo School", against the "India School" that favoured direct rule by Britons. Throughout the conference, Bell, Cox, and Lawrence favoured the Cairo School approach, and worked to promote the establishment of the independent countries of Transjordan and Iraq. They also supported the Sharifian Solution: that these states be presided over by the sons of the instigator of the Arab Revolt, Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca. In this proposal, Abdullah and Faisal would serve as the kings of the new countries (the eventual Monarchy of Jordan and Monarchy of Iraq).[81] Bell thought that Faisal's status as an outsider would enable him to hold together the new country of Iraq as someone not beholden to any one group, but rather a unifying symbol. In theory, Shias would respect him because of his lineage from Muhammad; Sunnis would follow him because he was Sunni from a respected family. In practice, pan-Arabism and Sharifism would prove more appealing to the Sunni population in Iraq than the Shia population.[75][77] Bell was also influenced by a strain of British thought that romantically considered the desert Arabs of the Hejaz as "pure" Arabs, and thus naturally suited to possessing legitimacy and respect; the success of Faisal in the Arab Revolt at assembling a coalition of disparate tribes acted as proof to this school.[72]

The Ottomans had divided the region into the strategically important for the British Basra vilayet in the south, the central Baghdad vilayet, and the northern Kurdish-dominated Mosul vilayet. The three had little cultural or economic interdependency under Ottoman rule. The territory of the new Iraq was an undecided matter before the conference. The question of what to do with oil-rich Mosul in particular became known as the Mosul question. Bell advocated for expansive Iraqi borders that would include all three of the Ottoman territories including Mosul.[82] In this, she was defeated at the conference; Churchill, Hubert Young, Lawrence, and others feared that putting Kurds under an Arab ruler might make them sympathetic to Turkey and disloyal to Iraq, while establishing an independent buffer state of Southern Kurdistan or Upper Mesopotamia would ensure the Kurds would see any Turkish incursion as unwelcome rather than a liberation. They insisted that the Southern Kurds only be included in Iraq if they directly asked to be. Bell would eventually get her way after the conference, though. In the process of the largely performative nationwide referendum to endorse Faisal of 1921, the referendum takers were able to find enough pro-Faisal members of Kurdish elite to satisfy the new British government of late 1922 to allow the inclusion of Mosul as part of Iraq after all. The Kurdish elite had extracted certain promises for autonomy, but these promises would be largely ignored. Bell wrote a letter in 1924 responding to an article likely from Arnold Wilson that argued Mosul would be happier under Turkish rule; Bell argued that based on the elite representatives to the Constituent Assembly, Mosul still wished to be part of Iraq.[83] Negotiations and occasional warfare with Kemalist Turkey would continue until 1926, when the Treaty of Ankara recognized Mosul as part of Iraq.[83][84] Lawrence would later write that he often feared and sometimes hoped that the over-large state Bell had built would collapse.[75]

Against the wishes of the Arab-sympathetic Bell, the British would eventually decide to keep the British Mandate for Palestine to be run directly by themselves, rather than make it part of Transjordan. Bell opposed the Zionist movement; she wrote that she regarded the Balfour Declaration with "the deepest mistrust" and that "It's like a nightmare in which you foresee all the horrible things which are going to happen and can't stretch out your hand to prevent them".[85] In a letter to her mother she described the Balfour Declaration as "a wholly artificial scheme divorced from all relation to facts and I wish it the ill-success it deserves".[86]

King Faisal; photo from c. 1915–1920

A photograph of British and Iraqi dignitaries in Baghdad from 1923 during the era of Mandatory Iraq. From second left to right in the front row, Kinahan Cornwallis, Sassoon Eskell, and Gertrude Bell. Bernard Henry Bourdillon stands directly behind Bell in the second row.

The Sharifan solution prevailed, and Faisal was presented to Iraq as the new king. The main local candidate for leadership who had opposed the selection of Faisal, Sayyid Talib, was arrested and exiled in April 1921 after being invited to tea with Percy Cox's wife, at Bell's suggestion and with Cox's assent; Bell viewed Talib as a potential rebel if left unchecked.[87][88]

Bell served in the Iraq British High Commission advisory group throughout the 1920s and was an integral part of the administration of Iraq in Faisal's first years. Upon Faisal's arrival in 1921, Bell advised him on local questions, including matters involving tribal geography, tribal leadership, and local business. Faisal was crowned king of Iraq on 23 August 1921. Referred to in Iraqi Arabic as "al-Khatun" (a Lady of the Court), Bell was a confidante of Faisal and helped ease his passage into the role.[89] Bell played the role of mediator between Faisal's government, British officials, and local notables. She took a special interest in public relations: arranging receptions, parties, and meetings; discussing the state of affairs with both the British and Arab elite of Baghdad; and transferring requests and complaints to the government.[72] She also suggested designs for both the flag of Iraq and Faisal's personal flag.[72][90]

The new Iraqi government had to mediate between the various groups of Iraq: Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Jews, and Assyrian Christians. Keeping these groups content was essential for political balance in Iraq and for British imperial interests. An important project for both the British and the new Iraqi government was creating a new identity for these people so that they would identify themselves as one nation. One of the main issues that faced Faisal was establishing his legitimacy among the Shia population. There was little enthusiasm for Faisal when he landed at the Shia port of Basra.[91] Faisal's administration, while reserving certain positions for Shiites as a token, was pan-Arabist and Sunni-dominated, a position that Bell endorsed. Sunni elites made it clear that they would consider any reduction of their traditional privileges during Ottoman rule, as compared to the Shiites or Kurds, a betrayal.[75] Bell thought that a Shia-dominated government would likely devolve into a theocracy.[72] Bell had difficulty making close relationships with the most important Shia leaders; she wrote that she was "cut off from them because their tenets forbid them to look upon an unveiled woman and my tenets don't permit me to veil."[58]

Bell did not find working with the new king to be easy; she wrote in one 1921 letter that "You may rely upon one thing — I'll never engage in creating kings again; it's too great a strain."[92]

Muriel Forbes advocated for the creation of a new library in Baghdad in 1919–20 and founded the Baghdad Peace Library (Maktabat al-Salam). Bell energetically promoted the library and subsequently served on its Library Committee as President from 1921 to 1924. This included participating in fund-raising events, soliciting free copies of books from British publishers for library use, and publishing articles in the library's Review. The library started as a private, subscription library, but due to financial difficulties, it was taken over by the Ministry of Education in 1924 and changed into a public library. In 1926, it was one of only two public libraries in the country. It became known as the Baghdad Public Library in 1929, and was renamed in 1961 to the National Library of Iraq.[93]

The Copper Bull, excavated in 1923 at Tell al-'Ubaid, near the ancient city of Ur. Under Bell's law, 50% of the artefacts were kept by Iraq, and 50% by the excavators; in the Ur dig, the excavators were sponsored by the British Museum and the Penn Museum.[94]

In October 1922, King Faisal appointed Bell as Honorary Director of Antiquities, a task suited to her experience and love of archaeology.[95] Several notable excavations took place during Bell's tenure, with Bell involved in the cataloguing and distribution of antiquities. Leonard Woolley conducted extensive excavations of the city of Ur from 1922–1934.[96][97] In 1924, Bell personally invited Assyriologist Edward Chiera to conduct archaeological excavations in ancient Nuzi, near Kirkuk, Iraq, where hundreds of inscribed clay tablets had been discovered and deciphered, now known as the Nuzi Tablets.[98]

The state of approvals for archaeological digs during Ottoman Empire rule had been loose and unorganized; digs happened without being registered to any authority; and there was no governing body with the authority to oversee or enforce the few regulations that did exist. Bell's chief role as Director of Antiquities was to draw up proposed legislation that would clarify the status of existing digs, regulate the granting of new permits, adjudicate ownership of discovered artefacts, and allow for the creation of a Department of Antiquities to enforce the law. Bell's initial proposals were considered overly friendly to British interests by Sati' al-Husri, Faisal's Director of Education and an Arab nationalist. Al-Husri slowed passage of the law, but Bell's law passed in 1924 after revisions; it largely followed the standard model elsewhere in the world, but notably reserved extensive power to the Director (that is, herself) to judge whether discovered antiquities would go in the national museum and stay as property of the state, or be allowed for export. It also placed the Department of Antiquities under the Ministry of Public Works, away from al-Husri.[95]

Bell's law was a hybrid that bridged the gap between the chaos of Ottoman-era archaeology and later laws that would more directly enforce Iraqi sovereignty on the matter. Foreign archaeologists continued legally exporting antiquities from Iraq, but in a more restricted manner. Simply organizing, tracking, and regulating archaeological digs seems to have hurt the black market trade in looted antiquities.[95]

As Director of Antiquities, Bell was responsible for storing excavated antiquities for personal review and examination. Her initial storeroom, called the Babylonian Stone Room, was soon filling up, however. She requested a dedicated building to act as a museum in March 1923, but was initially rejected. After sustained lobbying effort over the next years, carefully ensuring that the elites of Iraqi government and society saw the latest excavations from Ur and were invested in the project at parties and events, she finally secured a location for her museum plan on the ground floor of a stationery and printing building in March 1926. This became the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, later renamed the Iraq Museum; it opened in June 1926, shortly before Bell's death.[99]

As part of her role as Director, Bell helped establish procedures that were becoming standard around the world: carefully keeping a ledger of excavations and finds, as well as detailed descriptions of material, dimensions, and other comments; applying a formal numbering system to track them; and sending photographs of unusual finds off to the British Museum for further analysis. She did this with only a small but hard-working staff; the Department of Antiquities only consisted of her, Abdulqadir Pachachi, and Salim Lawi from 1924–26.[99] Bell and the Department helped preserve Iraqi culture and history which included the important relics of Mesopotamian civilizations, and the museum kept them in their country of origin.[100] Bell's will bequeathed £50,000 to the Iraq Museum and £6,000 to the British Museum to establish the "British School of Archaeology in Iraq" in London (later renamed to "The British Institute for the Study of Iraq"), which continued to fund and aid excavation projects (adjusted for inflation, around £2.1 million and £250,000 in 2021, respectively).[101][102][103][104]

The boundary lines of Iraq that emerged during the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the 1921 Cairo Conference, and the 1922 addition of Southern Kurdistan still hold today for the modern state of Iraq. The inclusion of the Kurdish-dominated Mosul vilayet in Iraq is still considered a mistake by many historians and commentators.[73][128] Bell supported this inclusion of traditionally Kurdish lands in a state dominated by Arabs, however, against the advice of some of her contemporaries including T. E. Lawrence, Edward Noel, and E. B. Soane.[75] More generally, Bell had extensive contact and personal friendships with many Arabs, but comparatively limited contact with Kurds, perhaps leading to her unfounded optimism on the wisdom of including Kurdish lands in Iraq.[75] As part of her role in the Iraqi government, she supported suppression of Kurdish revolts of the 1920s, and did not particularly advocate for any privileges or autonomy for the region.[75] The division of the Kurds between Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran led to their oppression in all four countries.[129][115] Saad Eskander wrote that Bell is more fondly remembered by Iraqi Arabs than Iraqi Kurds as a result.[75]

Bell proposed that many aspects of government be decentralized, both because it was the only feasible way to maintain a heterogeneous multi-ethnic and multi-religion state, as well as a certain degree of parochial romanticisation of classical Arab culture. Under her Tribal Criminal and Civil Disputes Regulation, local shaikhs in the countryside had wide authority to manage tax collection and the judiciary on their own; the national government only had such authority in the major cities. Later rulers would favor a strong, centralized government and find this decentralization intrusive; Bell's law was later repealed by the new Iraqi Republic government after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.[103]

Bell's work in archaeology and her tenure as Director of Antiquities is generally well-regarded. Her photographs, notes, and detailed plans of sites she visited from 1909–1914 is "priceless documentation" that preserved knowledge of many monuments and buildings since damaged or destroyed.[36][31] A memorial plaque dedicated to Bell was installed at the Archaeological Museum in 1930, after King Faisal requested her memory be honored in the project she had devoted so much effort. However, the reputation of non-Iraqi archaeologists later suffered due to her corrupt successor as Director of Antiquities, Richard Cooke. Cooke was forced to resign in a scandal after he was caught using his position to take and smuggle antiquities for his own personal fortune. After several short-lived successors to Cooke, Sati' al-Husri, Bell's political rival, took over as Director of Antiquities in 1934. He succeeded in advocating for a new law that revised Bell's 1924 law on Antiquities. The revised 1936 legislation gave the Iraqi government additional power in the division of antiquities between archaeologists and the government.[99]

Bell's work with the future National Library of Iraq and the library of the National Museum of Iraq was praised as helping establish the basis for libraries that would go on to be among the best in the Middle East by the 1980s. Ian Johnson praised it as a step toward bringing back a tradition of scholarship from the Abbasid Caliphate; the region had become an intellectual backwater under Ottoman rule.[93]

Many of Bell's compatriots wrote admiring articles, reports, and lectures upon receiving news of her death, including Vita Sackville-West, Leo Amery, Arnold Wilson, Percy Cox, Henry Dobbs, and others.[130] An obituary written by her peer D. G. Hogarth expressed the respect British officials held for her. Hogarth wrote:

No woman in recent time has combined her qualities – her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigour, hard common sense and practical efficiency – all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic spirit.[131]

Bell's 1920 white paper, "Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia", possibly the first white paper composed by a woman, is considered important and influential; H. V. F. Winstone called it her "finest political work".[115][79] Winstone also wrote that despite the later fall of the Kingdom of Iraq, Bell's "real work" had been her earlier role as an archaeologist, scholar, author, translator, and adventurer, a legacy that would last long after the Iraqi monarchy was forgotten.[132]

Elie Kedourie, an Iraqi Jew who left the country to become a conservative British historian, denounced Faisal as a "pathetic incompetent", Lawrence as a "fanatic", and Bell for her "sentimental enthusiasm" and "fond foolishness" in her advocacy of an Arab state.[133] He blamed them for unleashing Arab nationalism in a region where it had been previously unknown.[125] Kedourie admired large multi-ethnic empires and favoured, in retrospect, Arnold Wilson's solution of direct British rule that he believed would better protect minority rights; the Iraqi Jewish community would greatly shrink in the 1940s and 50s in the face of oppression from the hostile government.[133]

Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac described Bell as "one of the few representatives of His Majesty's Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection" in an overview of British policy-making following World War I.[134]

King Faisal dedicated a section of the Baghdad Archaeological Museum as a memorial to Bell in January 1930.[135]

A stained-glass window dedicated to her memory, made by Douglas Strachan, was erected in St Lawrence's Church, East Rounton, North Yorkshire. It depicts Magdalen College, Oxford, and Khadimain, Baghdad.[136] The inscription commemorates her as "Versed in the learning of the east and of the west, Servant of the State, Scholar, Poet, Historian, Antiquary, Gardener, Mountaineer, Explorer, Lover of Nature of Flowers and of Animals, Incomparable Friend Sister Daughter".[137]

In the 2010s, a team from Newcastle University released a comic version of Bell's life, with John Miers the cartoonist.[138][139]

In 2016, a campaign was launched to transform the Bell family's former estate, Red Barns, into a memorial and museum. The family were patrons of the Arts and Crafts movement in England, and the home, located in Redcar, features wallpaper by William Morris. Although the building is Grade II* listed, it had not been maintained. A 2015 exhibition about her at the Great North Museum in Newcastle helped raise interest. The exhibition moved to the Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar after its run in Newcastle.[140]

The Gertrude Bell archive, an extensive record of Bell's writings held by Newcastle University, was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme in 2017.[141][142]

In 2019, entomologists studying wild bees in Saudi Arabia described a new genus which they named to honour Bell, as genus Belliturgula, known from the species Belliturgula najdica from central Saudi Arabia.[143]

• In the 1992 ITV television film A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia, Bell is portrayed by Gillian Barge. The film covers negotiations at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference on the future of the Middle East.[144]
• A 1993 episode of George Lucas's The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (later compiled in the 1996 movie-length "Winds of Change") has Bell portrayed by Anna Massey. The episode features the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and covers her friendship with T. E. Lawrence.[145]
• In the 2015 film Queen of the Desert by Werner Herzog, Bell is portrayed by Nicole Kidman. The film chronicles much of Bell's life.[146]
• In the 2016 documentary Letters from Baghdad, quotations from Bell's letters were read by Tilda Swinton. The documentary quotes Bell's and her contemporaries' writings to tell the story of Bell's life and the events she was a part of.[147][148]