English archaeologist and writer Gertrude Bell was BOTD in 1868. Born at her family’s country estate in County Durham, she was unusually well-educated for her times, becoming the first woman to earn an honours degree in history from Oxford University. In 1899, she began travelling extensively through the Middle East and Asia Minor, becoming fluent in Arabic and Persian, and published her travel writings and photographs to great success. She led a number of archaeological projects in Persia (now Iran), working with fellow writer-explorer T. E. Lawrence. She was also an accomplished mountaineer, climbing Mont Blanc and other parts of the Swiss Alps. During World War One, she advised the British government on the Middle East, preparing maps for the army and utilising her local contacts to gather information, earning the nickname “Desert Queen”. After the Armistice, she participated in peace conferences in Paris and Cairo, helping redraw the political map of the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Like Lawrence, Bell advocated for British support of Arab nationalist movements, and supported the installation of Hashemite monarchies in the newly formed states of Jordan and Iraq. In later life, she became an advisor to King Fayṣal of Iraq, co-founding and curating the Baghdad Archaeological Museum. Bell never married, and had brief affairs with soldier Henry Cadogan and colonial administrator Frank Swettenham. She also intimate, erotically-charged friendships with Vita-Sackville West and Alice Drayton Greenwood, both of which appear to have been unconsummated. She died in 1926 of an overdose of sleeping pills, which may have been suicide. She was 57.