East is West

1945

Brasch DS49 S78

London: John Murray

British travel writer and polyglot, Freya Stark (1893-1993) travelled extensively in the Middle East – she spoke fluent Arabic and Persian. Her first trip to the Middle East was in 1927 and she was one of the first non-Arabians to trek across the deserts of Southern Arabia. During WWII, Stark was employed by the British Government’s Ministry of Information as ‘Assistant Information Officer’ for diplomat Stewart Perowne (1901-89), a man she would later marry. Essentially, she was a ‘propagandist’ for the British and tried to persuade the Arabs ‘to support the Allies or at least remain neutral’. Whether she was successful or not cannot be measured but her book East is West is a memoir of that time.