12
writer, beginning with her first trip to Syria in December 1927, Freya
Stark was discreetly scouting for king and country, primarily as an expert
cartographer. Just how, when, and by whom she was initially recruited and
trained will forever remain unclear. However, it seems likely that at some
time during the early 1920s, some branch of military intelligence (proba-
bly MI6; possibly MI4)^31 provided Stark with a training curriculum to
prepare her for active espionage overseas. Though she was always self-
disciplined in her approach to work, especially as a writer, it is simply unre-
alistic to assume that, while managing the flower farm with her beloved
but unreliable mother, Stark imposed upon herself the extra task of mas-
tering a challenging curriculum of Arabic, Arab history, and cartography,
unmentored and entirely on her own initiative. Then, at some time from
1925 onwards—presumably when Stark had indicated her readiness to her
handlers—she must have had her linguistic and technical competence
assessed and have been given some basic field training before being des-
patched in late 1927 on her first overseas mission (to the Levant). It is
simply not plausible that Stark might have set herself up independently as
a scout, after training herself for years and examining her own compe-
tence. Certainly, once she became fully operational, Stark’s intelligence
product was copious, accurate, and significant. Therefore, her training
must have been sufficiently thorough and professional to give her enough
self-confidence to execute her initial field operation in hostile Druze terri-
tory under dangerous conditions accompanied only by a female friend and
a male guide (Fig. 1.2).^32
Some years later, Stark’s advanced skills enabled her to navigate and
chart vast tracts of unknown or inaccurately mapped territory in northern
and western Persia single-handedly, correcting major geospatial errors and
discovering new topographical features, including entire mountains
(which she scaled expertly). It is also worth noting that Stark’s climbing
exploits in the Italian and Swiss Alps before the Great War and in the early
1920s were facilitated by the very same mentor who had originally intro-
duced her to secret government work during the Great War. W.P. Ker, the
eminent Scottish don who was then engaged in clandestine government
work, supervised Stark’s first European climbs, leading one to suspect jus-
tifiably that his may have been more than just friendly supervision, and
that Stark’s extraordinary activities as a female alpinist were part of an
official or semiofficial training agenda.^33
On at least one occasion during the interwar years, the Baghdad mili-
tary attaché, Vyvyan Holt (an eccentric with whom Freya Stark was