Jane Geniesse

Freya Stark was a posh woman with the connections and time to travel around West Asia back when it was referred to as the Middle East and mostly occupied by Britain and France. The book is mesmerising in its depiction of the privileged ruling class having a whale of a time sponging off each other, telling those less fortunate than them how to live their lives, and generally laying the groundwork for the multiple messes we're now in.

It is especially interesting on the subject of Palestine and show more Israel and how a Jewish homeland in Palestine was created. Stark was in the thick of the debate about how Britain should manage what had been promised by Lord Balfour in 1917, in light of what happened during the Second World War, both in terms of Britain losing interest in supporting increasingly hostile Arabic protectorates and in terms of the impact of the Holocaust. Stark's position was a balanced one, and she warned against displacing Arab communities to prevent a long lasting legacy of violence. Guess what. Nobody listened to her.

I found Stark absolutely awful in many ways, but she did some really exciting stuff and I admire her for that. There was a whole lot of cognitive dissonance going on in my brain as I read, let me tell you.

The biographer had some curious obsessions as well. At times, it was like reading Hello! magazine. show less

Freya Stark: tough but hypochondriac; sophisticated but naïve; intelligent but uneducated; friendly but demanding of her friends. Biographer Jane Fletcher Geniesse is even-handed, showing Ms. Stark warts and all. Freya Stark was the daughter of an unhappy marriage between Robert Stark, artist, and Flora Stark (his cousin; hence with the same family name). Flora was tall, beautiful, and flighty; her initial attraction to Robert seems to have paled fairly quickly, and Geniesse came across show more documentation that he was not really Freya’s father shortly after finishing her book; it had to be included as an appendix. The Starks moved to Italy, and Flora left Robert to become (probably) the mistress and assistant of an Italian factory owner; Robert left Italy to move to Canada and become a fruit farmer. Freya and her sister Vera visited the factory as children; Freya’s long hair was caught in rotating machinery and the scalp on the right side of her head was torn off – including her right ear. The disfigurement left her very self-conscious about her appearance; although she had plastic surgery later in life she always affected large hats and a hairstyle that covered most of the scarring.


Life in Italy was extremely hard for the Starks; Flora was very demanding of her children, treating them like maids, and seems to have allowed her probable lover Mario to make advances to both sisters (he eventually married Vera). Although Freya had some romances – notably with an older doctor – none prospered, and she eventually escaped her mother and home by traveling. Her first trip was to Lebanon, where she boarded with a native family while learning Arabic; she and a friend eventually tried to enter the forbidden Druse territory but were arrested by French authorities before getting too far. This set the pattern for her later adventures; she traveled “rough”, either sleeping on the ground or finding a room with local families. She was aided by her quick grasp of language and empathy for Middle Eastern women. Her breakthrough trip was a journey to Yemen, where her mapping won her acclaim from the Royal Geographic Society. This led to a further but less successful trip, the “Wakefield Expedition” (named after the British lord who financed it). Freya teamed up with archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson and anthropologist Elinor Gardner to further explore the Yemen. Unfortunately the ladies did not hit it off; in particular Freya thought Caton-Thompson and Gardner treated the natives poorly while the other ladies complained of Stark’s disorganization and poor planning. Behind their backs the local British authorities referred to them as the “Foolish Virgins”. Stark wrote a extremely catty book about the expedition, but her publisher persuaded her to tone it down.


Other expeditions followed; to Turkey, Tran and Iraq. Freya was in Iraq, holed up in the British embassy during the “Golden Square” pro-Axis revolt; then she was recruited by the Foreign Office to use her language abilities and contact to set up a pro-Allied organization in Egypt. She knew everybody; Virginia Wolff, Lawrence Durrell, Ian Fleming, Alice Roosevelt-Longworth, Vita Sackville-West, General Wavell, and the Queen Mother (her relationship with General Wavell seems to have been helped by the fact that Wavell apparently had a fetish for women’s hats and Freya had them in abundance). After the war, she had a brief marriage with another diplomat, and then continued travelling well into her eighties. She died a few weeks after her 100th birthday.


In addition to her diplomatic work, she had a successful career as an author. Rather than keeping a journal of her travels, she sent numerous letters to friends and family while on the road, asking them to keep them; her travel books came from harvesting these letters. I haven’t read any of her books, but they generally received favorable reviews. Geniesse prefaces each chapter with a paragraph from one of Freya Stark’s books, and all seem well written.


It wasn’t all seamless glory; Stark had a number of character flaws that Geniesse is not reluctant to point out. She tended to be dismissive of inconvenient laws and regulations, starting with her venture into forbidden Druse territory in Lebanon and continuing through numerous petty smuggling adventures (she had false bottom suitcases built to facilitate this). A particularly notorious episode involved a car purchased in India during the war; since cars were rationed, she had to have government permission to buy one – which she got, presumably on the strength of her reputation. She drove through Afghanistan and Iran, then sold the car in Iran for about five times what she paid for it. The press jumped on her, claiming she had sold a “government” car – which wasn’t the case, but that was the myth that stuck. She also took advantage of her government connections on other occasions, getting picked up by the RAF after she became ill on one of her Yemen expeditions and getting a ride from Baghdad to Cairo on a Blenheim on another trip. Most disturbing was her treatment of friends and acquaintances, who she expected to run errands for her, make purchases, and sometimes engage in some of her smuggling adventures; some friendships broke up over this.


Stark’s romantic life was unfortunately less successful than her career as a traveler and author. Many of her letters express despondency over her appearance; she thought of herself as ugly and regretted not being a “beauty”. Photographs of her show the younger Freya might best be described as “winsome”; at 5’1” she was small (she always wore high heels, even in the desert, a fact commented on by astonished Arabs), had slightly crooked teeth, and, of course, always wore large hats to disguise her scars. She seems to have been attracted to married and gay men, but was breathtakingly naïve about homosexuality, especially considering the diplomatic milieu she had lived in for years. It’s not clear if she had any lovers; her letters hint at fending off a couple of passes and yearning after unavailable or unwilling men. In her fifties, she accepted a marriage proposal from Stewart Perowne, a diplomat eight years younger and a homosexual. Her astonished friends tried to hint that Perowne was “queer” - Stark took that to mean “unusual” and said there was nothing wrong with it; they were even more aghast when Freya turned girlish and bought an assortment of peek-a-boo lingerie for her trousseau. To be fair, Perowne might have thought Freya was a lesbian, as many of her female friends were single women; he may have anticipated a companiable relationship (similar to their mutual friends Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West). Instead it was a dramatic failure; Freya didn’t adapt at all to the role of diplomatic wife (especially since Perowne was posted to the Caribbean, far away from her Middle East haunts) and was dismayed to discover what “queer” actually meant. She pushed heavily to get Perowne transferred to a more important post than Barbados, which was resented by Perowne and by the friends who she pressured. They eventually parted more or less amicably.


Geniesse is readable and mostly straightforward; if there’s a flaw it’s that she tends to psychoanalyze too much, attributing Stark’s talents or blaming her flaws on her father’s “desertion”, her mother’s “indifference”, or similar influences. Perhaps so; I tend to believe people are responsible for their own character but that’s just as unprovable as blaming their family life. There’s an appropriate selection of photographs from various stages in Freya Stark’s career, and an extensive bibliography. Footnotes and endnotes are unobtrusive. Sketch maps are frequent, but it would help if they showed the paths Stark took on her travels rather than just the general area. I’m most definitely inspired to read Freya Stark’s own books. show less

Freya Stark was an amazing woman. Not because she explored uncharted territories. Not because she dared to go where even the bravest of men hadn't. Not because she had no regard for her own well being. Not even because she was an expert Arabist. She was an amazing woman because she dared, period. We hear about the glass ceiling and what women even today are tolerating. Freya faced all that and more.
Geniesse weaves a convincing autobiography of Freya Stark using letters to and from Freya, show more journals, interviews, but mostly from Freya's own library of books written about her experiences. Freya was a prolific writer and so Geniesse had plenty of material to draw from. The final product is a fascinating account of one woman's rise to recognition through exploration and encourage, especially during one of the most volatile times of our history - World War II. show less

This was a wonderfully written account of the life of legendary explorer, archaeologist, and adventurer Freya Stark. The book simply absorbs you as you begin with Freya's early life and troubled childhood. The trials she faced as a child spilled over into her adulthood. She was longing for love, longing for freedom, longing for adventure. She found that in the Arab world. Blazing a trail where Gertrude Bell left off, Freya's work became invaluable to the British Government. This "Passionate show more Nomad" wandered all over from Egypt to India, and it's all here for us in this wonderfully poetic look at her life.

Highly recommended. show less