There’s no getting out of the conclusion that we have made an immense failure here. The system must have been far more at fault than anything that I or anyone else suspected. It will have to be fundamentally changed and what that may mean exactly I don’t know. No one knows exactly what they do want, least of all themselves, except that they don’t want us."
This is what Gertrude Bell wrote in 1920 in one of her "Letters from Baghdad" about Iraq which she helped to shape. It could have been written yesterday. As the architect of an unstable Iraq in the middle of an unstable Middle East, she must take some responsibility for the mess Iraq is in today. If she is a heroine, it is not as a visionary but as a wit-ness to the absurdity and horror of building nations for peoples with other loyalties, models, and priorities.
Bell was found dead in her room in Baghdad in 1926. It is believed that she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills, though that may have been an accident: she left no note and had asked her maid to wake her. It was a fittingly mysterious end to an extraordinary and exotic life - one worthy of the title "Queen of the Desert", a film as lavish as Lawrence of Arabia, and - just to get you interested - starring Nicole Kidman.
It's today's entertainment in the 'Clubhouse' by the pond. I'm afraid you have to do with this trailer, but you can always buy the DVD on ebay.
