11
in the region was originally inspired to some degree by the formidable
achievements of that other great scout, Gertrude Bell (1868–1926), with
whom she is often compared, Stark nevertheless saw Bell more as a rival or
a challenge than an inspiration. Bell died shortly before Stark set out on
her first oriental journey in 1927–1928 at the age of 33. Thus Bell repre-
sented for Stark an earlier generation of Arabists, and therefore in some
sense an irrelevance. Moreover, Bell’s Oxford education and privileged
political career bore little resemblance to Stark’s individual struggles and
achievements. In fact, apart from an evident interest in and deep knowl-
edge of the Arab world, the main things the two women had in common
were their extraordinary courage as mountaineers, their skill as writers,
and their disappointments in love.
From this point on in Freya Stark’s long life (she lived to the age of
100), her adventurous journeys have been well documented, not least by
Stark herself in her beautifully written, highly readable books. She did not
always travel alone but usually did, accompanied only by a few guides or
servants, and in so doing intrepidly visited lawless tribal areas that many a
male counterpart or colleague would have considered far too dangerous to
approach.^29 Understandably, many outside the intelligence community
found Stark’s solitary nomadism peculiar and suspected that she had ‘gone
native.’ More penetrating was the reaction of a British schoolteacher,
Francis Edmunds, whom Stark encountered in Lebanon, and who clearly
saw her as some kind of spy, questioning why she was so friendly with the
Druzes and so interested in antiregime elements, and just how she had
obtained introductions to such people in the first place.^30 However, those
who knew that Stark was a scout, and who evaluated and processed her
intelligence product, were simply impressed with her exceptional abilities
as an explorer, mountaineer, and cartographer, though some were doubt-
less astonished that a woman could function so effectively in those roles.
They were probably unaware that even as a young woman Stark was actu-
ally no stranger to the secret world, having worked briefly in 1916–1917,
between nursing jobs, in the War Censor’s Office as an intelligence lin-
guist, searching German, French, and Italian correspondence for encrypted
messages. She apparently excelled at this work, for which she had been
recruited by her academic mentor at London University, the eminent
Nordic scholar William Paton Ker (1855–1923), who had long been a
family friend, and who himself did ‘hush-hush’ work for the government.
In fact, it is clear to anyone with a sense of the secret world that
throughout her interwar career as a professional traveller/photographer/
PROLOGUE: OF SPIES, SCOUTS, AND COVER