Why would the life of the most influential woman in the British Empire—the “mother of modern Iraq”—be cut short in its prime? This is the tantalizing question surrounding the life of the remarkable Gertrude Bell. Gertrude was an Orientalist, a spy, a mountaineer, an aviatrix, a photographer, an archaeologist, a prolific author and translator, and the architect of the Iraqi state. During and after World War I, she worked alongside some of the most accomplished military and political figures in the world, including T.E. Lawrence—“Lawrence of Arabia” and Sir Winston Churchill. Her death in Baghdad in 1926 remains a mystery. This play provides clues from the events that framed her astonishing career—her passionate love life, her adventures in the Arabian Desert, her mentoring of the Iraqi royal family, and her establishment of the Iraq National Museum. As Iraq seems to be falling apart today, the life and work of Gertrude Bell is an epic account of the politics of empire in the 20th Century.

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