Thank you for reminding me, Temp, that's tomorrow or Thursday afternoon sorted. I meant to check dates before and forgot and now I find it's on at the GFT this week.

Ah Temp you'll drive yourself crazy trying to understand the ME, it is so enormously complex that we were idiots to ever have been involved in it in the first place. Or more to the point, governments full of their own self importance blundering into that of which they knew nothing and making the inevitable unholy mess of it.

As for Syria it is useful to remember that the current conflict began over oil, not really religion.  Two proposed oil pipelines and Assad decided on the Russian one (who were allies of Syria anyway) over and above the one that the Saudis, Qataris et all wanted and the rest is a war by proxy. Because of the vacuum left by the destruction of Saddam and Iraq the Iranians and Saudis are battling over dominance in the region, always preferable to do it on someone else's turf. Add to the mix the disinfranchised Sunnis of Iraq that became ISIS, the Israelis who want to get rid of Assad, the Turks who wanted to claim a piece of Syria and Iraq for their greater Turkey project, the meddling Westerners and every other man and his dog that has a bone to pick and we have the destruction of yet another beautiful country and its history causing a full half of it's population to become destitute refugees which small struggling states like Jordan, Lebanon and Greece are left to cope with.

Assad may be Alawite but Syria was a secular country none the less with a wide variety of different religions and sects rubbing shoulders fairly well for a long time. Well not any more.

Sorry not history, it is a struggle to get my head around the current these days without adding millenia of complex history into the mix.

ID wrote:

Ah Temp you'll drive yourself crazy trying to understand the ME, it is so enormously complex that we were idiots to ever have been involved in it in the first place. Or more to the point, governments full of their own self importance blundering into that of which they knew nothing and making the inevitable unholy mess of it.

I know - and I have indeed very nearly driven myself crazy trying to understand it all and trying to work out what the truth of it all is.

Lawrence and Bell understood a century ago that oil was going to be the cause of the trouble to come. They both were real experts on the ME, but the various governments - British, French and American - didn't want to know. They had their agendas and that was that.

Nothing changes, does it? I wonder what Lawrence and Bell would say to us were they to return.

Ferval - do let me know what you think of the film. We are unlikely to get it down here, although Exeter Picture House may show it. The DVD comes out at the end if June, I think, so I'll probably have to wait till then.

Temperance wrote:

Nothing changes, does it? I wonder what Lawrence and Bell would say to us were they to return.

I told you so?

Temperance wrote:

Gertrude Bell. What a life this woman had!

Finally I got to see this film today and what a superb production it is. A documentary of over an hour and half in duration and yet every frame is simply stunning. Admittedly there are some computer generated images, chronological eccentricities, excerpts from old Arabic feature films and other tricks of photography but these only serve to enhance the overall presentation. Truly a work of art.

It seems quite a cliche to say it but Gertrude Bell was indeed someone who was a century ahead of her time in her understanding of the Middle East. When one considers that in 1913 the Jewish population of Baghdad represented an estimated 30% of the city's inhabitants (in the film Gertrude estimates it as being as high as 40%) and consider the situation now, and when one considers also the sizable Chaldean and Assyrian etc Christian minorities living in Ottoman Mesopotamia at the time and how Bell saw that an appreciation of this plurality alongside the Shia and Sunni divide among the Moslem population, was literally critical if a meaningful Iraqi state were to be forged from the various vilyets and again consider the situation now, then one can see that her wisdom on these matters has thrice been ignored by 'the powers that be' the intervening 100 years.

My only criticism of the film (and it's a very minor one) is that the producers insisted on all of the British characters in it being depicted as having cut-glass received pronunciation accents. No English regional or Scottish or Irish etc accents in evidence. But that's just a minor quibble. I highly recommend the documentary to anyone who hasn't seen it.

P.S. There was a feature film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell made a couple of years ago but that hasn't been released in the UK and so is not to be confused with this documentary.

Is this film available online - still haven't managed to get my TV fixed and am suspecting I'll have to replace it. I know nothing of Gertrude Bell so it might be wise if I were to learn something of her.

It's not available online yet as far as I'm aware. It's still doing the rounds of the film theatre chains. The Europa group and the Curzon network seem to be the main ones although the schedule is somewhat haphazard and also depends on where one lives or where one can reasonably get to. Mrs Vizzer and I saw it yesterday at a Europa for example. The Cambridge Arts Picturehouse is showing it this weekend. The Screen in Saffron Walden will be showing it tomorrow (Bank Holiday Monday).

Check here for local Europa listings:

Europa Cinemas Map

And here for Curzon:

Curzon Cinemas List

Here is the documentary makers' own website:

Letters From Baghdad

Lady in retirement,

I mentioned already Gertrude Bell in this thread. I just put the German documentary overhere. But with the new concept of the forum there are a lot of problems to introduce the youtubes. For instance I have taken this from the thread. And I can't return anymore to my previous message preview.
I will send this first and then explain in a following message, while this one seems to be blocked...

Kind regards, Paul.


PS: Have to push on the "all content let appear" otherwise the youtube is again lost

Lady in retirement,

I mentioned already Gertrude Bell in this thread. I just put the German documentary overhere. But with the new concept of the forum there are a lot of problems to introduce the youtubes. For instance I have taken this from the thread. And I can't return anymore to my previous message preview.
I will send this first and then explain in a following message, while this one seems to be blocked...

Kind regards, Paul.


PS: Have to push on the "all content let appear" otherwise the youtube is again lost

Addendum to the previous message:

Lady in retirement,

here is the message:

Subject: Re: Lawrence of Arabia   Tue 7 Oct 2014 - 18:03
Did some years ago for the ex-BBC forum a lot of research for Gertrude Bell and the whole Middle-East situation including Lawrence of Arabia, when I saw the Arte film "the Baghdad Railway" For Nielsen (who, if I recall it well, understands also German) "insert here the youtube from above in German, which I can't obviously not transport overhere  And for those who understand French: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9tt8o_le-chemin-de-fer-de-baghdad-14-18-1_news The new episode of five is each time indicated at the bottom in an http...

Kind regards, Paul.

Vizzer wrote:

Temperance wrote:

Gertrude Bell. What a life this woman had!

Finally I got to see this film today and what a superb production it is. A documentary of over an hour and half in duration and yet every frame is simply stunning. Admittedly there are some computer generated images, chronological eccentricities, excerpts from old Arabic feature films and other tricks of photography but these only serve to enhance the overall presentation. Truly a work of art.

It seems quite a cliche to say it but Gertrude Bell was indeed someone who was a century ahead of her time in her understanding of the Middle East. When one considers that in 1913 the Jewish population of Baghdad represented an estimated 30% of the city's inhabitants (in the film Gertrude estimates it as being as high as 40%) and consider the situation now, and when one considers also the sizable Chaldean and Assyrian etc Christian minorities living in Ottoman Mesopotamia at the time and how Bell saw that an appreciation of this plurality alongside the Shia and Sunni divide among the Moslem population, was literally critical if a meaningful Iraqi state were to be forged from the various vilyets and again consider the situation now, then one can see that her wisdom on these matters has thrice been ignored by 'the powers that be' the intervening 100 years.

My only criticism of the film (and it's a very minor one) is that the producers insisted on all of the British characters in it being depicted as having cut-glass received pronunciation accents. No English regional or Scottish or Irish etc accents in evidence. But that's just a minor quibble. I highly recommend the documentary to anyone who hasn't seen it.

Absolutely agree. I had some friends staying with me last night and we watched the DVD  "Letters From Baghdad". I rather think they were bored by it, but I was absolutely blown away by this film - one of the best things I've seen for ages. My friends have gone now, and I'm watching the whole thing again this afternoon.

Yes, what a woman Gertrude Bell was and what a life she led - a brilliant mind, but still a woman, with all a woman's capacity to love and suffer. Her step-sister, Molly Trevelyn, noted in her diary in 1915: "Hers was not a happy nor a kindly nature...sorrow has dried up all the springs of kindliness..."  This was brief comment on how Bell coped with the death of a married man whom she had loved - and whose death she learnt of "casually, at a dinner party". Bell lived adventurously, had the brains to study and to understand as well as any man, but she still knew little personal happiness. She was not, I think, by nature unkind, but how terrible it must have been to be a woman like her in 1915! No wonder the "springs of kindliness " dried up!

I was stunned by the perspicacity of  something Bell wrote to her step-mother - I think in 1917 - words that could have been written by a Roman girl in 410:

"It's very curious what you tell me about the anarchy of the universe. Perhaps after all it isn't anarchy, but only the end of the order we are accustomed to. There is no doubt it has come to an end - east and west. 'There's room enough in the sun for us all' - I'm not certain that is true: perhaps there's just not enough sun to keep us all warm..."

Lawrence comes across in the documentary as an arrogant misogynist - but perhaps he was just of his times: on first meeting Gertrude Bell he noted that she was not beautiful ("without her veil, that is") and that "it was necessary to squash her with her with a show of erudition". Apparently Gertrude needed copious amounts of tea after Lawrence and his chums had grilled her ( for an hour and a half) on what she actually knew about history and archaeology: they certainly gave this jumped-up female - for all her Oxford degree in History (she took a first) - a hard time. Seems though that the woman refused to stay squashed...

She is what I call a real feminist hero - the girls today should learn about her. Were I still teaching, I should make certain they did.

PS Re accents - not posh/cut-glass enough!

PPS "The real difficulty under which we labour here is that we don't know exactly what we intend to do in this country: we have rushed into this business with our usual disregard for a comprehensive political scheme."  A letter from Baghdad c 1917.

"Remember - for us at least - friendship is stronger than war..."

Lesson for us all there perhaps.

Temperance,

as I said I did in the time for the BBC all the research and had  a look now to the film Vizzer and you mentioned. In the documentary that I just mentioned "The Bagdad Railway", but it is sadly in German or in French, Gertrude Bell is mentioned even before Lawrence of Arabia in detail.
Very promizing when you read the comments about the film, among others (and I didn't know about the desert queen. Stupid film it seems)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/apr/21/letters-from-baghdad-review-gertrude-bell-tilda-swinton-iraq

 I have a dozen of links to see the documentary in full length, but you have always to subscribe and all such things...and I am afraid to do that...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kiozh_zTEys&vl=en


Perhaps I will have to come "in the cost" of buying the DVD as you have done...

But yes what a woman...she stays for me in the queue,  of a Margaret of York, third wife of Charles the Bold from Burgundy

Kind regards, Paul.

Temperance wrote:

I was stunned by the perspicacity of  something Bell wrote to her step-mother - I think in 1917 - words that could have been written by a Roman girl in 410:

"It's very curious what you tell me about the anarchy of the universe. Perhaps after all it isn't anarchy, but only the end of the order we are accustomed to. There is no doubt it has come to an end - east and west. 'There's room enough in the sun for us all' - I'm not certain that is true: perhaps there's just not enough sun to keep us all warm..."

I'm so glad you reproduced that Temp. That for me too was the stand-out quotation from an outstanding precis of her work. Gertrude (as with many other thinking people of her time) could sense that the convulsions of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the entry of the America into a European conflict marked a seismic shift in world history. 400 years of European ascendancy were coming to an end. Needless to say that this had profound implications for all of the various European powers with regard to their metropolitan constitutions and also their relationships with their imperial and overseas territories.

The woman had her dark side too, of course. Excellent article here:


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/12/iraq.jamesbuchan


What I find so ironic and so tragic is that this brilliant, intrepid, passionate woman, who was a feminist in the true sense of the word, died in exactly the same manner as Marilyn Monroe: alone in a bedroom, having taken - whether by accident or by design - an overdose of sleeping pills.

" That for me too was the stand-out quotation from an outstanding precis of her work. Gertrude (as with many other thinking people of her time) could sense that the convulsions of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the entry of the America into a European conflict marked a seismic shift in world history. 400 years of European ascendancy were coming to an end. Needless to say that this had profound implications for all of the various European powers with regard to their metropolitan constitutions and also their relationships with their imperial and overseas territories."

Excellent wording Vizzer. Yes as with many other thinking people of her time...

Kind regards, Paul.

Temperance wrote:

The woman had her dark side too, of course. Excellent article here:


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/12/iraq.jamesbuchan


What I find so ironic and so tragic is that this brilliant, intrepid, passionate woman, who was a feminist in the true sense of the word, died in exactly the same manner as Marilyn Monroe: alone in a bedroom, having taken - whether by accident or by design - an overdose of sleeping pills.

I read the interesting article from the Guardian, Temperance. Thank you for the link.

Kind regards, Paul.

I see Letters from Baghdad is on BBC 4 on Monday at 9.00pm for those of you who can access it.

And an interesting discussion about the man from a programme recently aired on the BBC World Service.

Thank you very much nordmann for this link to which I listened with interest.

Kind regards from Paul.