The Valleys of the Assassins by Freya Stark

She wrote more than two dozen books based on her travels, almost all of which were published by John Murray in London, with whom she had a successful and long-standing working relationship.When planning my trip to Qatar, it was hard to decide on reading material. During the 1930s she penetrated the hinterland of southern Arabia, where only a handful of Western explorers had previously ventured and then never as far or as widely as she went.ĭuring World War II, she joined the British Ministry of Information and contributed to the creation of a propaganda network aimed at persuading Arabs to support the Allies or at least remain neutral. She based herself first at the home of James Elroy Flecker in Lebanon and then in Baghdad, where she met the British high commissioner.īy 1931 she had completed three dangerous treks into the wilderness of western Iran, in parts of which no Westerner had ever been before, and had located the long-fabled Valleys of the Assassins (hashish-eaters). In November 1927 she visited Asolo for the first time in years, and later that month boarded a ship for Beirut, where her travels in the East began. She later learned Arabic and Persian, studied history in London and during World War I worked as a nurse in Italy, where her mother had remained and taken a share in a business. When she was 13 she had an accident in a factory in Italy, when her hair got caught in a machine, and she had to spend four months getting skin grafts in hospital, which left her face slightly disfigured. She delighted in reading French, in particular Dumas, and taught herself Latin. She was often ill while young, and confined to the house, so found an outlet in reading. For her 9th birthday she received a copy of the One Thousand and One Nights, and became fascinated with the Orient.

She spent much of her childhood in North Italy, helped by the fact that Pen Browning, a friend of her father, had bought three houses in Asolo. Freya Stark was not only one of the first Western women to travel through the Arabian deserts (Hadhramaut), she often travelled solo into areas where few Europeans, let alone women, had ever been.

In her lifetime she was famous for her experiences in the Middle East, her writing and her cartography. Her mother, Flora, was an Italian of Polish/German descent her father, Robert, an English painter from Devon. Freya Stark was born in Paris, where her parents were studying art.

The Valleys of the Assassins by Freya Stark