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miners’ strike cripples steel industry
June
First room of lraq Museum opened on the 14th
July
GLB dies on the 12th; funeral with military honors; buried in British cemetery, Baghdad; Memorial service at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster
Ministers pay tribute to GLB in British parliament
Treaty between Britain, Iraq, and Turkey defines borders of Mosul district
1927
Dame Florence holds pageant at Mount Grace Priory in presence of Queen Mary, partly financed by sales of signed editions of Dickens’s works and his letters to the family
April
Tributes paid to GLB at Royal Geographical Society, London
August
Publication of
The Letters of Gertrude Bell
by Dame Florence, who gives celebratory dinner inviting King Faisal, Iraq prime minister Jafar, the Dobbses, the Coxes, and the Richmonds
October
Turkish Petroleum Company, a consortium of international oil companies, strikes oil near Kirkuk
1928
Window dedicated to GLB in St. Lawrence’s Church, East Rounton
1929
Turkish Petroleum Company changes its name to the Iraq Petroleum Company, developing what had been identified as the largest discovered oil field in the world
1930
Commemorative bronze plaque unveiled by King Faisal; bust of GLB identifies the Gertrude Bell Principal Wing of the Iraq Museum
May
Dame Florence Bell dies on the 16th
1931 June
Sir Hugh Bell dies; Maurice succeeds to baronetcy on the 29th
1932
British School of Archaeology in Iraq founded in London; £4,000 ($388,000 RPI adjusted) donation from Sir Hugh
Iraq joins League of Nations as independent state
1933
King Faisal dies; succeeded by son, Ghazi
1939
King Ghazi dies in motoring accident, succeeded by son Faisal II
1940
Rounton Grange used as a home for Second World War evacuees and for Italian prisoners of war
1947
British Treasury grant enables formation of the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq under auspices of the School of Archaeology; permanent base in Baghdad established
1953
Rounton Grange demolished
1958
Faisal II of Iraq assassinated in coup; Iraq declared a republic
1991 January
Iraq Museum closed during the Gulf War
2000 April
Iraq Museum reopened
2003
Immediately before and during the invasion of Iraq by Americans and British, the museum was looted of some 15,000 items, many of which have been recovered; later reopened to archaeologists and school visits
2015
February Iraq Museum again opened to the public

THE LINGUIST
    Florence, Gertrude’s stepmother, had been brought up in Paris and spoke English with a charming French accent. Most of the family’s holidays abroad were taken in Italy and Germany, and Gertrude was not the kind of traveler who would visit a country without mastering at least the basics of the language. As soon as she arrived at Weimar she arranged to have German lessons, and as soon as she arrived in Venice, she arranged to have Italian lessons. Gradually she acquired, besides her English and French, fluent Italian, German, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The latter she learned very quickly, but it was the only language she found difficult to remember. Her around-the-world trips gave her enough Hindustani to dispense with an interpreter, and a smattering of Japanese and Urdu. She described her progress in each language, somewhat boastfully, in her letters home to her family.
    Of all the languages, Arabic proved the most difficult for her to learn. Staying in Jerusalem in 1900 with family friends Nina and Freidrich Rosen—he was the German consul—she took six lessons in Arabic a week, which did not prevent her from reading Genesis in Hebrew before dinner, for light relief.
    Persia, from Gula Hek, the Summer Resort of the British Legation, June 18, 1892, Letter to Her Cousin Horace Marshall
    . . . Is it not rather refreshing to the spirit to lie in a hammock strung between the plane trees of a Persian garden and read thepoems of Hafiz—in the original mark you!—out of a book curiously bound in stamped leather which you have