DAUGHTER OF THE DESERT Georgina Howell (Macmillan, £20)

This is an extraordinarily timely biography of Gertrude Bell, responsible perhaps more than any other for the establishment of Iraq as a nation state after the First World War.

Born in 1868, the daughter of a wealthy northern industrialist, Bell rejected the conventions of the day to read history at Oxford (where she gained a First), and after a brief flirtation with mountaineering, fell in love with the desert.

Travelling extensively across the Middle East during the early years of the 20th century, she gained an intimate and unrivalled knowledge of Arab culture.

Such expertise was put to good use when war broke out, ending up as she did in Baghdad as the Turks retreated north. There she played a key role in the formation of an effective administration as well as in the negotiations that eventually led to Iraqi independence.

A remarkable story, then, told engagingly and often first-hand via the extensive use of Bell's own prodigious written output.

The character which emerges is complex - quick-witted, astute, devoted to her father - but at the same time intolerant and dismissive, not one to suffer fools.

Moreover, it is no exaggeration to describe her relationship with Arabia as a love affair, her only other serious liaison recounted here in rather too much detail and ending disastrously.

So Bell will be remembered most for Iraq, and for her grasp of the region's unique political challenges - which despite the passage of time do not appear to have changed much.

One can't help wishing this book had been written five years ago and copies sent to Bush and Blair. If nothing else, it might have prompted them to give a little more thought to the consequences of military action in Iraq.

As for Gertrude Bell, she must be turning in her grave at the mess we've stirred up.