Dame Freya Madeline Stark (1893-1993) was an Anglo-Italian explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan as well as several autobiographical works and essays.

She was one of the first non-Arabs to travel through the southern Arabian Desert.

“There he pitched his camp while his enemies surrounded him and held the water: the details are as living to-day as then, 1257 years ago; nor can anyone with much profit visit these Holy Cities unless he knows something of the story, for its tragedy is built into their very foundation. It is one of the few stories I can never read without weeping. It has come down with the inevitability, the slow growth of doom, of a Greek tragedy, and with the human pathos of living people humanly beloved.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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[Baghdad Sketches: Journeys Through Iraq, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2011, p. 191]

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